


Crystal Clear

by BrightBlackTrees



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Ben is a metal head, Bens a little shit at first, Bens favourite band is Black Flag, Class Differences, Coming of Age, Divorced parents, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Gaslighting, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Sorry, Lukes just trying his best, Mentioned Hayley Williams, Poor Rey (Star Wars), Rey Needs A Hug, Rey just lets him get on with it tbh, Reys mum is an alcoholic, Rich Ben Solo, Rose Tico is our sweet queen, Secret Relationship, Sex, Smut, Star Wars References, Teen Angst, Teen Romance, Title from a Paramore Song, Young Ben Solo, Young Rey, author needs a hug at this stage, excuse you jessika pava who gave you permission to be such a glorious caring intellectual plant mum, hot summer nights make for restless bodies amiright, i'll make it up to y'all i promise, the characters are sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:47:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 38,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24137608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrightBlackTrees/pseuds/BrightBlackTrees
Summary: It is very difficult to like Ben. He is abrupt and disagreeable and he takes almost everything as a challenge… But it is much more difficult to dislike him and Rey knows, because she's tried.Rey has a secret, and his name is Ben Solo: metal-head, rich boy, social pariah. They both agree it is for the best to keep their relationship - or whatever it is - hidden from the rest of the school, or there could be disastrous consequences for both of them.But as the mounting pressure of adulthood looms, can they hold onto something that is so firmly cemented in their adolescence? After all, sooner or later, everyone has to grow up.
Relationships: Finn/Rose Tico, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 18
Kudos: 68





	1. Dead Horse

**Author's Note:**

> Greetings, fellow humans.
> 
> This is a three part Reylo fanfic which came to me while sitting in my isolation garden.  
> It's kind of like a Reylo meets 'Normal People' story, so if you like the book by Sally Rooney or the BBC series, this may be for you!
> 
> Rey and Ben are both 16 at the time of this chapter (the legal age of consent in Britain, where this story is set.) There is nothing overtly explicit to begin with, that will be introduced in later chapters when they are adults, but there is detailing of certain, shall we say... bodily functions.
> 
> Just as a warning, Ben is a bit of a dick in the first chapter. He will get better and learn a lot about how to be a considerate human being as he grows up, but for anyone who is kind of triggered by gas-lighting behaviour (I feel ya) do mind the tags and only indulge in fic you know will be safe for you.  
> (I write poetic fuckboys quite well because sadly, I've dated far too many.)
> 
> Also, I'm Northern English so there are a lot of regional colloquialisms in the writing - if anyone wants me to add notes in the future expanding on certain phrases, I'd be more than happy to do so if you let me know!
> 
> AND ANOTHER THING. This fic was written to the soundtrack of Hayley William's new album, Petals for Armour. It makes very good listening and really helped me dive into the lives of our two gorgeous, lost puppies as they try desperately to find belonging while it stares them in the face the whole damn time.
> 
> Anyway, I really, reeeally hope you enjoy the story.
> 
> All ma love, Anais x

_I beat it like a dead horse_   
_I beat it like a drum_   
_Oh, I always stay too long_   
_Skipping like a record_   
_I dang along_   
_To a silly little song._

_***_   
  


It’s springtime and apple blossoms are falling from the tree above Rey’s head. The pond is babbling as the sprinkler system cascades against the water's surface. The sun is warming the right side of her body as she gently swings in a macrame hammock. There are bluebells in the garden, and cornflowers and cow parsley, honeysuckle and daffodils.

It’s unseasonably hot for the middle of March. Usually the temperatures don’t get this high until August and even then, it isn’t a sure thing. Rey supposes that must be global warming flexing its muscles.

Her earphones are tinny as they play a song that reminds her of her mother. She is breathing slowly, eyelids closed beneath her silver-rimmed sunglasses, a pair of aviators she found left behind in a classroom one day. Beside her, Ben is lying on his belly and idly tearing up the grass, dressed all in black. It’s far too hot for that kind of get up, Rey thinks, but he’s a die hard rocker afterall and will be damned if a little thing like the 25°C heat will keep him from expressing his adolescent turmoil.

He is lucky to have all this at his fingertips, she thinks. He doesn’t know it, but he is. Rey lives on the eighth floor of a block of flats so all she has is a slim balcony which a) never catches the sun and b) is piled high with rubbish. Part of the reason she spends so little time at home is because of how much she loves the warmth on her skin, like a desert loves the rain or a cigarette loves a lighter or a cat loves tuna in brine.

“What are you listening to?” Ben asks without looking at her. She only has one earbud in so she is able to catch what he says. She pinches the spare one between her fingers and holds it towards him, an invitation. He glances over at her, eyeing it skeptically. “Nah, you’re alright.”

“You might like it.” she says, relaxing back into the hammock.

“I am willing to bet my dad’s vinyl collection that I wouldn’t.”

“A bold offer. Will they sell for much? I need a new bike chain.”

“Let me put it this way: are the lyrics about having fun in the sun?”

“No.”

“How about being in love with the boy next door?”

“No.”

“Huh. What about dancing the night away?”

“Actually they’re about trying to be there for someone who’s finding it hard to wake up in the mornings because they’re really sad.”

“Well. Life is sad.”

Rey feels like saying ‘ _spare me’_ but thinks that would be insensitive. Ben has always aired on the morose side of life, but recently his parents have been going through a pretty messy divorce so she has decided to make allowances for the time being.

“It’s Paramore by the way. Not exactly Katy Perry.”

He wrinkles his long nose in evident distaste. “Don’t ever say the name ‘Katy Perry’ in my presence. And for the record, Paramore used to be _okay_ at a stretch. _Used_ to be. Now it’s just Hayley Williams doing weird art shit to synth beats.”

“You didn’t like _After Laughter_?”

“Like it? I could barely tolerate it! I heard the opening of Hard Times and peaced the fuck out of that album.”

“So you never even listened to it?”

“I didn’t need to. You don’t listen to as much music as I do without learning how to identify a good album in the first few seconds.”

Rey sniffs and the corner of her mouth twitches involuntarily as she says, “You’re a snob.”

“Just because you have shitty taste.” he shoots back almost without missing a beat. _Ouch._

“Chill out.”

“I take my music very seriously.”

“You don’t say?” she says, an eyebrow cocked at his Lamb of God t-shirt. “I was only teasing.”

“Well, don’t. I care about this stuff a lot.”

“Okay. I’m sorry for making fun of you.”

She watches him from beneath the lense of her sunglasses. He has rolled onto his back now, staring up at the bright sky, squinting in the harsh light. His body is broad and his legs are long. When they are in bed together, he dwarfs her in every thinkable way and she is able to curl up into a ball like a woodlouse while he envelops her with his arms. His size in juxtaposition to her petiteness also means that he can pick her up with little to no effort, which makes for some interesting foreplay. Her mind begins to wander towards his bedroom, not so far away, and she slips her legs out of the hammock with as much grace as she can muster, taking a few light steps towards him and standing in the sunlight shining on his face.

His features relax as he stops squinting and he tilts his head at her. Slowly she stands over his body and lowers herself so that she is straddling his belly. His hands reach out and touch her bare thighs, almost instinctively it seems. She reaches up and removes her sunglasses, places them on his face instead. He flashes her a grin.

“Do they suit me?” he asks.

“They really do. You know what else does?”

“What?”

She leans down and plants a lingering kiss on his lips which are soft and pillowy. Ben is a good kisser. He’s good at everything in the romance department, but especially at kissing. She could kiss him all day and all night and then again in her dreams and she’d never get tired of it. It makes her legs turn to jelly and her stomach tighten every time.

She feels his hand palming her buttocks, rolling the flesh there beneath denim.

“Wanna go upstairs?” he asks, a little breathless, lips moist with her kiss. He looks adorable and irresistible all at the same time. She nods.

“When does your mum get back?” she asks.

“Don’t care. She’ll have to deal with it.”

“Ben.”

“Later, she’s out with Amilyn, they’ll be hours.” He wafts the topic of his mother away as if it were smoke. Rey kisses him again, because she likes to.

He takes her hips and rolls them over, gently considering how strong he is, and she can feel that he is already hard. She feels breathless for a moment and reaches down to rub the bulge in his trousers. A low moan grumbles in his chest and it excites her.

“I can help you with that.” she breathes.

He fixes her with a hooded gaze and then stands, reaching down to pull her up too. When she is standing, he ducks down and swoops her into a fireman’s lift so that she is dangling over his shoulder. She lets out a scream of laughter and kicks her feet lightly against his stomach.

“You’re coming with me.” he says and gives her bum a little spank as he carries her towards the house.

***

Rey has never been the academic type - that’s Rose’s territory. Rose is her best friend, has been since they were in primary school together. When they started secondary, they became pretty inseparable but they have their differences, as all mates do. Rey likes art class, independent films and the idea of travelling to South America to see Matchu Pitchu one day; Rose likes science class, Doctor Who (all seasons) and the idea of travelling to the Moon one day. Despite these disparities of interest, they adore each other and have never, ever kept a secret from one another.

Until this year.

“Earth to Rey! Have you gone suddenly deaf?” Rose asks, snapping her fingers in Rey’s face and distracting her from staring at the way Ben has tied his long, raven black hair back in a ponytail to keep it out of his eyes as he runs up and down the pitch. Rose’s face comes into focus and Rey grins, slightly embarrassed.

“Sorry, boo.”

“What are you looking at?” Rose asks, turning her head to face the direction Rey had been looking moments before.

“Nothing.” she lies quickly and unconvincingly. _Learn to fib better._

Rose’s eyes narrow and a smirk curls the corner of her vaseline-glossed lips. “You were looking at him, weren’t you?” she asks with an air of self-satisfaction.

“No - who?” Rey responds in alarm.

“I’m not an idiot, Rey-Rey. I’m your best friend. You think I can’t read you like a book? I know what’s been going on, I was just waiting for you to tell me first!”

Rey’s eyes are wide and her heart is hammering. “What do you mean?”

“Poe Dameron?” Rose says as if it were obvious. “You fancy the pants off him, don’t deny it. I’ve seen you two in Maths sat at the back together, you’re always giggling. And the way he looks in those little football shorts.” She cocks her head towards the other side of the school field where the boys are running around chasing a ball and calling out to each other. Rey is so relieved, she actually perspires as she lets out a long-held breath.

“I do not!” she cries, bursting out in a fit of laughter. “Never!”

“You do, don’t deny it! I know you, Rey!”

This gives her pause for a moment and with a guilty twinge, she wonders how Rose would feel if she really _did_ know Rey and what - _who_ \- she got up to in her spare time. She shakes her head and allows herself to laugh a bit more, because to hell with thinking.

“I categorically do not fancy Poe. Seriously, Rose.”

“I can’t believe you’re trying to put me off.” Rose is positively indignant and it only makes Rey laugh all the more, doubling over in a fit of the giggles.

“Ladies!” A shout rings out from several yards away. Ms Kenata, the PE teacher, has noticed them slacking off. “If you’d like to compose yourselves and join the other girls in their efforts to tidy away the rounders equipment, I’m sure it would be greatly appreciated by your peers.”

“Sorry, miss.” The two chorus before linking arms and making towards the place where their classmates are roughly hurling sports gear into large canvas bags. 

On the way back to the changing room, they pass the boys’ PE class filing towards the opposite block. Several of them nod or grin or give the usual ‘cool guy’ greeting of, “Alright, ladies?” or “Nice shorts, girls” to which Rey and Rose either smile smugly or roll their eyes, depending on how they’re feeling that particular day.

Today, Rey lets Rose soak up most of the attention for herself. She has seen Ben at the back of the line of boys and is working hard to keep track of his every movement without actually looking at him. As they come within a few feet of each other, he looks up and their eyes meet; his are dark and overcast like a stormcloud brimming with rain.

_Oh._

So, he isn’t exactly in good spirits today.

She chews the inside of her cheek and tries to act casual, flicking the end of her ponytail and tugging at her gym shorts as she carries on her way. Casual, easy-breezy Rey, that was her. Don’t know, don’t care. Although, as she walks through the heavy fire door into the girls changing room, she finds herself still pondering the expression on his face. She had been hoping for a bit of steamy eye contact, maybe even a rogue wink which she would have happily rewarded him for later. It was difficult when she got that kind of taciturn look from Ben not to think she had done something wrong.

She texts him on her way home from school that evening.

_Alright?_

After five minutes, there is still no reply so she decides that desperate times call for desperate measures and double-texts him.

_You pissed off at me or something?_

There. That will do. She must show some restraint.

She has been home for half an hour by the time he replies.

_What were you laughing about in PE today with your friend?_

She frowns in consternation, completely taken aback.

_Rose? You know her name_

_Nothing. We were just messing around._

_You were looking over at us playing football_

_Have you told her?_

_Christ no_

_Not that she’d care_

_I mean alright, she’d probably be surprised but she’s not judgemental_

_Wow. Thanks_

_I didn’t mean it like that_

_So you definitely haven’t told anyone?_

_No_

_Bloody hell, paranoid, much?_

_Can I come over?_

_Leia’s in. I could come to you?_

Rey stares at the message for a moment, considering. Ben’s house is nice. Ben’s house is practically a country estate compared to the dismal council-rented flat she shares with her mum, who incidentally Rey has no idea as to the whereabouts of at the present moment. A part of her doesn’t want Ben to see the way she lives, the mess and the plywood and the dust and the endless stairs usually inhabited by hunching chavs - or ‘ne’er-do-wells’ as Mr Yoda from downstairs calls them.

On the other hand, she would really like to see him.

A few hours later, Rey’s mum still hasn’t shown up though she thought she heard some shuffling from the other bedroom at one point. Ben is lying on his back, naked but for the thin duvet covering his lower half.

She watches his eyes glancing around the room. Ben is the sort of person who feigns disinterest a lot of the time - all part and parcel of his ‘scene’ - but Rey sees the subtle ways he picks up on his surroundings like a docile cat, only his eyes moving to forever know in impeccable detail the nature of his environment, as if to be caught in the act of studying the world was a criminal offense that he could not be caught in.

“You know those are weeds, right?” he asks, his gaze landing on the glass of dandelion clocks in water on her windowsill.

“Obviously.” she says.

“And they’re dying. You’re not supposed to keep them.”

“They’re just going through a different phase of life.”

“They’ve got like, a few days in them at most. What’s the point?”

“So what, do you disagree with the concept of nursing homes? Once a person is on their way out, you think they should just be written off?”

“Completely different argument, but yes, now you mention it.”

Rey pauses for a moment, watching him for a flicker of insincerity but unnervingly, she finds none.

“You don’t mean that.”

“If you say so.” he replies without looking at her.

It is very difficult to like someone like Ben. He is abrupt and disagreeable and he takes almost everything as a challenge to his ‘individualism’ as he calls it, when really it is just teenage angst which he will eventually get over.

However, it is much more difficult to dislike him and Rey knows, because she’s tried.

Not wishing to pursue the conversation they’ve just been having, Rey changes the subject.

“How’s your art coursework going?”

Ben sighs. “Mr Ahkbar wants me to try a more ‘multi-disciplinary’ medium. He says I’m not experimental enough.”

“That’s bollocks.” Rey says indignantly. “Surely if the work you’re doing is good -”

“It doesn’t reach the marking criteria of what’s ‘good’. I can’t wait to leave, the whole system is a fascist regime.”

“What are you going to do after exams?”

“Probably an apprenticeship or something, in an art studio maybe or at a graphic design company. Graphic novels is where I’d like to go but advertising is where to make the real money - not that I care about any of that materialistic shit.”

Rey can’t help but glance at his Doc Martens discarded carelessly on her floor, or his designer leather jacket draped over the back of her chair, or his Levi jeans crumpled at the foot of the bed.

“You’ve got to make money though, haven’t you? Everyone does.”

He eyes her and smirks, reaching up a hand to rumple her hair. “You’re a little capitalist, aren’t you?”

She shakes him off, annoyed. “And you’re a big hypocrite, aren’t you?” she says before she can stop herself.

He looks taken aback for a moment. “Touchy.”

“I’m not, I just resent you saying that _I’m_ a capitalist consumer when you have loads of nice stuff that I don’t. It’s easy to say you don’t care about money when you have an unlimited supply of it.”

“I don’t have an unlimited supply. Where is this coming from?”

She sighs and slumps into her pillows. It’s a single bed and Ben is a big guy, so there really isn’t enough room to throw a strop without catching him in the crossfire.

He leans up on one elbow to give her some room and says tentatively, “Are you okay?”

Rey kind of hates it when he does that: says something moronic and insensitive to get her riled and then takes the tactful approach like he has no idea what it is he’s done wrong. She feels a bit close to tears, if she’s honest.

“I’m fine. I just wish you’d see that… your house is really big and - well. As you can see.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s _really_ big.”

“It’s not actually for you to say. You’ve always had - stuff. I haven’t. I don’t.”

“Yeh, well, stuff doesn’t make you happy, believe it or not.”

“Makes life a lot easier.”

“Life would be a lot easier if my parents were still together, so.”

She snorts at that because she can’t help herself. “Yeh? Meet my dad.”

“It’s not a pity contest.” he says slowly.

“Then stop trying to make it one.”

Ben raises his eyebrows and blows out a puff of air. “I think I should go.”

In spite of how much of a dick he’s being, Rey doesn’t want him to go. But nor does she want him to think she’s getting clingy - because she’s not, obviously.

“Fine.” she says quietly.

He climbs out of bed and pulls on his underwear and jeans. He is doing up his studded belt when he says, flicking a sheaf of ebony hair out of his eyes, “I’m sorry if what I said upset you. I - I know it must be hard living without a dad and - I get that, personally, I really do. And I know your mum isn’t always…” he seems to struggle to find the right word. “Present.”

Rey says nothing because she feels more than ever like crying because as it happens, he really does see her and her life and listens to her and remembers things. Her home life is one thing she doesn’t talk about to anyone, not even Rose, but Ben knows because how can you have sex with a person who doesn’t understand your shit with your parents?

He sighs at her silence and pulls on his Iron Maiden t-shirt. “Look, can I text you tonight?”

She nods. Then, when his socks and boots are on, he steps towards her and presses a kiss to her forehead. She can feel the tip of his nose against her scalp. She closes her eyes briefly. When she opens them, he has thrown his jacket over his shoulder and is closing her bedroom door and then she is alone.

***

“So,” Rose says with the air of a newsreader about to ask a politician a tricky question. “Where did you slope off to last night?”

“Me?” Rey asks, as if there was someone else sitting with them on the rug of her best friend’s bedroom floor as they took turns painting each other’s fingernails. “Home.”

“I didn’t even know you’d gone until Jannah told me.”

“Sorry.” she says sheepishly, knowing that had been a mistake. “I felt a bit ill.”

“How much did you have to drink?”

“About four cans probably.”

“Didn’t you have dinner before you came out?”

“Yeh, my mum made us some pasta but I wasn’t hungry. I should have eaten more really, I would have been able to stay out longer if I did.”

This was a lie. Her mum had been asleep when Rey left the flat last night for the camp out with her friends. She’d had a packet of crisps, but as the electricity had tripped - or the bill hadn’t been paid - the cooker, microwave and toaster had all been out of use.

“Were you sick?”

“No, thankfully. I just walked home. The fresh air cleared my head a bit.”

Rose narrows her eyes. “We were camping out in a field.”

Rey laughs nervously. “Yeh, but… you know.”

It was a lame response and she could see that her friend knew it.

“I thought you might have sloped off with Poe. He went missing too.”

“Did he?” she asks, genuinely surprised.

“Yeh, for a bit, but then he came back. Finn said they went looking for badgers, the nutters.”

“Looking for badgers?” Rey giggles.

“Yeh. I don’t know what to do with those two sometimes. But, back to the topic at hand, you definitely, _definitely_ weren’t alone with Poe at any point?”

Rey places the hand that is not having its nails painted a deep plum colour over her heart. “Scouts honour.” She felt good about saying this because it was true: she hadn’t been with Poe at all, in fact she’d barely seen him last night.

She _had_ seen Ben, had left the camp out because he had texted her asking what she was up to and if she wanted to get drunk and watch _Quadrophenia_ at his house, which she had wanted to, so she’d left abruptly, stopping only to tell the first person she saw, Jannah, that she wasn’t feeling too hot and was going to make tracks. She had slept over at Ben’s and somewhere in the clutter of his bedroom, had lost her top. Therefore she is currently wearing one of Ben’s oldest band t-shirts with the slogan ‘ _Thin Lizzy_ ’ written across the chest. Her hoodie is zipped up to hide it because it looks nothing like something she would wear, meaning that consequently she is quite hot in Rose’s bright bedroom, despite the windows being thrown open to tempt in a gust of cool wind.

“Rey-Rey,” her best friend says, gentle but probing. “You know you can tell me anything.”

For a moment, she considers telling all and her heart skips a beat.

But no, it’s best if people don’t find out. It would get far too complicated; Rose is a romantic and if she learned that Rey had been having secret sex with one of the least popular blokes in school for several months, she would fashion an epic love story in her head in which Rey and Ben announce their feelings of deepest attraction to one another at the end of year prom in front of a ballroom full of swooning people before they then went on to live happily ever after. Rey, in her wisdom, knows that this will never be the case; that just isn’t the deal with her and Ben.

“I know, Rose. And if I ever have a secret, I promise I will tell you about it first.” 

“Good.” she smiles, satisfied.

Perhaps the additional lie had been overkill and truth be told, it didn’t make her feel good to hoodwink Rose who only meant well and wanted what was best for her. But, at the end of the day, it had placated her and now they could get on with being what they had always been: Rosie and Rey-Rey.

***

Mr Skywalker is standing at the front of the class, going over the periodic table with what appears to be forced enthusiasm.

“Guys, it doesn’t have to be this hard. Your exams are around the corner. I cannot sit them for you, though believe me, if I could I would because it would make me look very good and I could be looking at that pay-rise that’s always eluded me. However, the fact is, I can’t do that and funnily enough, I believe in each and every one of you - yes, even you, Finn. You just need to, need to study - and _hard._ ”

“He’s such a try-hard.” Poe murmurs at the end of their bench, scowling at Mr Skywalker. Rey thinks this is a little harsh as Mr Skywalker is often very funny and has been encouraging and accommodating to everyone in the class at one time or another. She doesn’t know what Poe’s problem is, aside from the little dig he’d made at Finn just now, he hasn’t done anything particularly offensive.

“He’s only joking.” Finn mumbles back, shrugging. Even he is smiling. Rose places a hand over his on the desk and Finn entwines his fingers with hers. They only started dating at the start of the school year but they are very much attached at the hip. For some reason, Poe scowls even more at this comment but doesn’t say anything further.

“Now, my fine pupils, in lieu of being able to organise myself before I started work today due to an accident on the A6, I find myself without your worksheets, so you’ll all kindly sit like good children while I go and photocopy them. If anyone moves from their seats, I will keep you at lunch for five minutes. If I hear anyone making too much noise, I will keep you at lunch for five minutes. If you scratch ‘I heart Rose’ into the desk, Finn, I will keep you at lunch for five minutes. Are we all following my drift?”

The class gives a lowly rumble of, “Yes, sir.”

“Fantastic. I’ll be back - like the Terminator.”

Rey cringes a little as he exits the classroom, pulling the door closed behind him. The customary general chatter strikes up as soon as he is gone, but Poe says very loudly out of nowhere, “What a fucking douche.”

“Woah, unnecessary.” Rose says in exaggerated shock.

“Well, he is.” Poe cries, clearly wound up about something. “The way he prances and flounces about. ‘Oh, my dear students!’” he says, putting on an exaggerated and high-pitched imitation of their teacher which is really nothing like him at all. “‘I’m just going to prance over here and flap over there!’” He does an unpleasantly callous flick of his wrist.

“Is he gay?” asks Jannah from the desk behind.

“Who cares?” asks Rey.

“Hey, Solo!” Jannah hollers, never one for keeping her voice down. Rey’s insides begin to flutter. She feels an odd sense of foreboding and she doesn’t like it. “Isn’t Skywalker your uncle?”

Rey refuses to look across at Ben, a few benches in front of her own on the other side of the room, but she hears him reply in a cold tone, “And?” 

“Fucking hell, touchy.” Jannah snorts. “He is, though, isn’t he?”

Ben doesn’t reply but to Rey’s dismay, Jannah continues. “Is he gay? Solo? Solo? Is your uncle gay, Ben Solo?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.” Ben spits, and Rey has to look up now and she can see that his cheeks are flushed puce. She can’t stand to see him looking like this.

“Jannah, chill out.” she says lamely.

“Well, what does it matter if he is?” Jannah carries on, still louder if it were possible, seemingly goading Ben now. Jannah is usually quite nice, a good friend if she’s on your side, but she has a thing about being heard and will never, ever back down in an argument. “Are you ashamed of him, Ben?”

“Fuck off.” Ben spits vehemently.

The room is suddenly filled with the chorus of shrill hoots.

“What?” Jannah hisses, her palms flat on the desk like a tiger ready to pounce.

“Leave it, for fucks sake, Jannah.” Rey says, desperate to shut her up. She can’t stand the way she is speaking to Ben, the way he is reacting to it, the way people will react to him reacting to it and feed the situation, a melting pot boiling to a point of going horribly, horribly wrong -

“I don’t need you to defend me.” Ben snarls, dark eyes now on Rey. She is taken aback, can feel her mouth, suddenly dry, hanging open and her eyes wide from the shock of it. Then, she is very indignant.

“Jesus, I was only trying to be nice.” she retorts, scowling at him.

“Well, don’t try, it’s not a good look on you.” he hisses, turning from her to face the front of the room. 

Rey’s blood is suddenly boiling and before she can think of anything else to say, she utters the words: “That isn’t what you said on Saturday night.”

It doesn’t even make sense.

There is a stretching, dreadfully painful moment. Then, Gwen Phasma cries, “What the fuck?”

And now everyone is talking, the ones who haven’t been paying attention now very much are.

“Are you two fucking?” Hux, one of Ben’s friends whom Rey has never liked, smirks loudly, derisive excitement evident in his voice. He is smiling, the weasley little shit. Most of them are. They think it’s funny. And no matter what Rey says or does now, they will always think it is funny, the idea of it, true or not. It is inescapable, irrevocable.

“It’s a joke obviously.” she says, valiantly feigning a casual tone. But the look on Ben’s face chills the very fibres of her flesh, makes her veins fizz and contract. His brow is cloudy like a storm, eyes shadowy, jaw set in a hateful scowl.

“You wish I was fucking you, council house trash. You’re probably selling it to make ends meet because benefits aren’t enough to fund your mum’s drug habit.”

Before Rey can process what Ben just said to her, Jannah is on her feet, has flown across two desks and has her fingers around the collar of Ben’s white school shirt. 

“What the fuck did you just say to her?” She roars, looking like a lioness in all her fury. “Do you think that’s acceptable, you fucking cunt?”

People are gasping. People are laughing. People are shaking their heads. Rey can’t even tell what her face is doing. All she knows is that she is devastated, almost to the point of paralysis. She sees Jannah with Ben by the throat. She sees her friends’ looks of outrage. She sees others snorting into their fists. She sees Rose’s hand reaching out to rub her shoulder but she cannot feel it. She does not see Ben, because she is suddenly unable to lay her eyes on him.

She is vaguely aware of the attention in the room shifting as Mr Skywalker enters the classroom and says in a commanding tone, “What’s this? What’s going on? Jannah, get outside now.”

“No!” She cries back fiercely. “This twat just said something vile -”

“Out _now_ , or it’s D12.”

“But sir, just listen! This little shit just said -”

“That’s it. Isolation. Go.”

Jannah lets out a growling shriek of frustration and many in the class begin to jump to her defence.

“Sir, no!”

“That’s not fair!“

“She was sticking up for Rey, sir!“

“Everyone _sit -_ ” Mr Skywalker says. “ _Down._ Ben, come with me.”

Rey is aware of Ben reaching beneath his desk for his rucksack before stomping towards the door of the classroom. It slams shut behind them.

Rose is saying in her ear, “Are you okay?” and she can hear her classmates saying, “Is she crying?” underneath their breath.

***

Ben

Thu 23 Apr, 19:29

Are you still pissed off or can we talk?

21:01

Rey

Rey

We should talk

Fri 24 Apr, 4:16

Come on

Sun 26 Apr, 00:23

If I’m being honest, you pissed me off

I know shouldn’t have talked about your mum, that was out of order but tbf you were just as bad

Whatever

01:45

You haven’t said anything to people, have you?

***

The park is lit up with bright multi-coloured lights that make it look like Christmas, though it is a balmy summer evening. There are bumper cars, a ghost train, a pop-up ferris wheel. There are stalls selling candy floss and popcorn and artificial roses and teddy bears that would frighten any child with their bulging eyes and crazed smiles.

Poe has just scored his second basketball hoop out of five – a privilege that cost him £2 – and everyone is grinning and saying “Come on, Poe. You’ve got this.“ It is half past nine and the sky is only just beginning to descend into nightfall. The air smells like bonfire smoke and sickly sweet vomit, either a child who went too hard on the ghost train or a drunk person who overindulged on warm Karlsberg.

Poe pots his shot and wins the prize, a stuffed Bowzer from the Mario Kart games. He looks pleased as punch, holding it up in both hands to admire it.

“Ugh, don’t look now.“ Rose says with disgust in Rey’s ear. “It’s the metal-heads.” 

“What are those freaks doing here?” Poe asks. 

“They can only come out after dark, technically we’re in their territory.” Finn says and they all laugh. Rey makes a particular show of doing so.

“I’m going for a wee.” She says to Rose, trying to look nonchalant. She still hasn’t looked over to where Rose pointed out the group of black-clad teens, but she knows that among their numbers must surely be Ben.

“Are you ok?” Rose asks, looking sombre, and it is all Rey can do not to snap back, ‘ _Yes, for fuck’s sake. Be cool’._ Instead, she nods and gives her friend an Oscar-worthy demonstration of a smile.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Rose persists, all the while clinging on to Finn’s arm.

“No, no, I’m fine. I’m desperate – should I meet you back here?” She is saying this while already backing away.

She really does need a wee but it isn’t as bad as she’d made out at all, she just needed to be out of sight of Ben – or perhaps some small part of her had wanted him to see her walking away on her own.

She does her business in the grim public toilet block in pitch black, because the fluorescents have never actually worked, and uses her phone torch to check her mascara and eyebrows. She applies a little lipgloss (‘less is more’ as Rose always says) and leaves the lightless room.

Outside, she is half-surprised, half-vindicated to see that Ben is leaning against the breezeblock of the building by himself, smoking a cigarette. She keeps up her pace, as if she hasn’t noticed him.

“Hey.” She hears him call out and she carries on walking. Then he is in front of her, blocking her path. “Please wait.”

“What do you want?” She asks and she wishes she sounded angrier.

“What I said was… Bad. It was really bad.” he stutters, scratching the back of his neck and staring down at the gravel path. “I was just really angry about what you said and I freaked out - everyone has been talking about it now. We agreed it would be a secret, Rey, and you broke that trust -”

She stills, feeling like a deer caught in headlights, just at the moment it clocks it about to be steamrollered. 

“You’re still trying to blame me.” she gasps with utter incredulity. “You are unbelievable.” Her voice begins to rise. “What you said was unacceptable –”

“It was, of course it was, it was really – it was horrible, okay? And for what it’s worth, I regret it.” He states, looking for all the world a little pleased with himself.

Rey blinks no less than three times at him in amazement.

“You ‘regret it?’ Christ.” She brings up her palm to rest on her forehead, attempting to gather her cool and comes up empty handed. “What would be so bad about people finding out about us anyway? Would it be the worst thing in the world?”

She is sure she sees his pupils blow out. He stammers, “You’re the popular one, Rey, and I’m a _loser_. We’re from different worlds. Maybe I’m just thinking about your reputation.” He raises his hands in mock horror. “How selfish of me.”

She actually growls. 

“Alright, I’ll go and tell my friends now then, shall I? If it’s _my_ problem, I’ll just go and tell them all right now and then you won’t need to worry about keeping it a secret anymore.”

“Rey -”

She takes a step to go past him towards the crowds of people in the park. “No, mate. Not on my account. Don’t let me ruin your life with my obvious shame about being your side piece. I’ll just crack on and announce it to the world, shall I?”

“No. Don’t – stop _fucking around_.” he spits.

“There!” she cries triumphantly. “You see? It isn’t about my friends or my reputation at all, it’s about yours. You’re an elitist, metal-head rich-boy who doesn’t want to deign to affiliate himself with the likes of me. ‘Council-house’ me. Right?”

“Rey, I said I’m sorry.”

She breathes deeply for a moment, looking into his face, desperate to find a shred of understanding. A quiet falls between them for a long moment.

”No, Ben.” she says softly. “You didn’t.”

She waits. His head is bowed, mouth opens once, twice -

“Can I have my Thin Lizzy shirt back?”

 _So,_ she thinks. _This is what heartbreak feels like: being branded a fucking idiot._

“Yeah.” She breathes and passes him, not looking back. He does not follow her.

The next day, she bikes the four miles to Ben’s house and knocks on the front door. Leia answers, beaming and holding it open.

“Hey, Rey. Why didn’t you just come around the back?”

“I only came to drop this off.” she says, smiling politely because she has always liked and respected Ben’s mother.

“You don’t want to say hi to Ben?”

“No thanks, I’m sure I’ll see him around.”

“Is everything alright between you two?” She asks, framed in the large doorway holding Ben’s folded top. “You’ve not fallen out, have you?”

Rey bites her lip, unsure how to answer, really wanting to tell the truth but knowing it is more trouble than it’s worth.

“Everything is fine. I’ve got to run to the shops for my mum but I’ll see you soon, I’m sure.”

Once again , she does not look back.

***

Rey has never understood the concept of a prom, though she would never say so in front of her friends. They’ve been talking about it all year like it’s some huge life-changing milestone, when really it’s just a rented out function room of a hotel decorated with lilies and fairy lights and confetti, filled with the same group of people sticking to the same cliques, just dressed up in a way they never usually would.

A lot of the girls in her year have spent the day at salons, having their hair styled into sleek curls or updos that they could just as well have done at home and probably paid out of the arse for – or their parents did. Rey had been working at her local supermarket and had only had time to rush home and tug on her ankle-length, olive-coloured dress, brush through the knots in her hair before throwing it into a ladybird and ram her heels into a bag as she slipped out of the front door. She had worn trainers for the bike ride up to school which were now tucked safely in her locker.

There had been photographs as they had waited for the coaches to take them to the venue. Rose’s mother had played with Rey’s hair and told her that she looked ‘transformed’ and ‘very sophisticated’ and insisted on taking her picture several times. Rey knew she was only being kind because her own mother wasn’t there, but she appreciated it immensely all the same.

On the bus, several of her peers had slyly tucked into hip flasks of straight vodka and whiskey and on their arrival, each student had been charged with a glass of low alcohol champagne - provided they’d had their sixteenth birthday, of course. Dinner had been a sweet potato Wellington with carrots and green beans and boiled potatoes and a red wine jus. Finn had wrinkled his nose at the platter, but Rey had thought it was delicious – it certainly beat her usual Saturday night meal of beans on toast.

Poe was tipping a measure of whiskey into Rey’s Coke Zero, glancing around to make sure the teachers weren’t looking. He was very handsome in a navy blue suit with a white shirt popped open at the collar, like an actor or someone who vacationed on the French Riviera. In her green dress, their colours clashed, but she had smiled as Rose tilted her disposable Kodak towards them and he draped a gentle arm around the small of her back, resting his hand on her opposite hip.

When Poe had asked her to be his date for the prom back in May, it had been the most ridiculously obvious choice to say yes. Rose had been predictably smug, Poe hadn’t suffered the hardship of a rejection and Rey had mercifully not been forced to go by herself. In the last few weeks, while nothing in particular had happened between them on a physical level, he had been warmer and more affectionate towards her in their day-to-day school life. This was something Rey hadn’t quite gotten used to and wasn’t entirely convinced she wanted to but she kept telling herself that it was important to keep up appearances. 

“You two look so fucking gorgeous together, it’s actually unfair.” Jannah had hissed in her ear back in the school’s car park as they’d waited for the coaches and it was unfortunately at that precise moment that Rey had spotted Ben, several feet away with his group of friends, one hand in the pocket of his charcoal black trousers, the other holding his phone as he gazed intently at the screen. He was wearing a light blue shirt and a dark waistcoat with no tie. Suddenly, the unbidden image of _his_ arm wrapping around her waist instead of Poe’s slipped into her mind and she felt a warmth between her legs, her cheeks flushing. She hated herself for feeling it, or maybe she hated him? She hardly knew anymore.

“Smile!” Rose beams from the other side of their round table, clicking the flash on her disposable camera almost instantaneously so that Rey doesn’t even have time to yank a passable expression onto her face. Poe seems to have managed to get his face together just in time but Rey, not entirely joking, cries out, “No paps!” while shielding her face from view with both her forearms.

“But you look beautiful!” Her friend responds in a sing-song voice.

Rey thought that in an age of camera phones, Rose’s notion of carrying around an old click-camera that she’d need to get developed eventually was a bit of a questionable idea, full of old-world sentimentalities that were entirely unnecessary. However, it made her best friend happy so she wasn’t about to shit on the idea - no matter how many photographs of her blinking were surely captured forever on the film inside the device.

“Do you want to go out to the balcony?” Poe asks.

“Um, yeah, okay.” she responds and they take their drinks outside to lean against the stone walls of the patio overlooking the grounds of the hotel. Now that the food is finished and because the music hasn’t started yet, many of the attendees have jumped the balustrade and are roaming the gardens, heedless of social propriety.

“You cold?” asks Poe. It’s a summer night in the middle of a heat wave and walking in these heels is enough to work up a sweat but she simply replies, “No, I’m alright.”

They laugh for a while at their schoolmates chasing each other around on the grass and dirtying their party clothes. At some point one of Poe’s friends from the football team races up to him and goads him to join in with the ruckuss.

“I’m alright, mate.” he says.

“You can go.” Rey says encouragingly because she really, really doesn’t mind. He eyes her for a moment to make sure before removing his jacket and vaulting the stone barrier, running at full pelt to join the fray. Rey watches him go and smiles in case anyone is watching her, but really she would rather be in a field somewhere drinking a bottle of beer and wearing a pair of shorts and flip-flops.

All of a sudden, she feels a coolness on her back as the early evening sunlight is blocked by a figure, a long shadow appearing beside her own. She turns and sees Ben.

“Alright?” he asks. His hands are in his pockets and his chin is tucked into his chest.

She swallows.

“Yeah.”

She thinks about walking back inside but she doesn’t want to cause a scene.

“Having fun?”

“Loads, thanks.”

“Cool. I, um, I wanted to say – thanks for dropping off my shirt.”

It is over a month ago now, but whatever, better late than never.

“You asked for it back.”

“It’s just quite important to me. It was my dad‘s, so.” She doesn’t respond. He continues. “Obviously since he and my mum broke up… I don’t see him much anymore, so.”

Rey grits her teeth.

“I bet.”

“So I really appreciate you bringing it back.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve still got your bike lock.”

Rey can’t take much more of this idle chatter, as though there was nothing wrong between them. She straightens up and turns to leave.

“Keep it.” she says as evenly as she can as she breezes past him.

“Rey.” She is halfway towards the door and stops because _fuck him_ if he has some sort of weird power to halt her in her tracks. “I’m sorry. Okay? I said and did some pretty awful things. I’m pissed off that I said them because it was really below the belt. I’ve been feeling really shit at the moment because of my parents -”

_Nah._

She spins around on the spot and fixes him with a glare.

“Okay, stop. You need to understand something: I’m not saying that what you’re going through right now isn’t valid because it really is, it’s important and you should talk to someone about it because it’s a horrible time - I _know_. But that isn’t an excuse for what you did. It was cruel and unkind and I didn’t deserve it.”

“You’re right, you didn’t deserve it.”

“I know I didn’t. I just said that.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made up excuses, I’m sorry I said it in the first place, I’m sorry that it was in front of all your friends.”

“Most of those people weren’t my friends. My friends are understanding and supportive, but the rest of those people? They don’t know how I feel or if it was true or care about spreading rumours about me. It’s one thing that you -” she gulps, her heart fluttering. _Fuck him._ “It’s one thing that you basically called me a prostitute, it’s another that you talked about – my mum.”

To his credit, he looks very grave - _at long last._

“It was unforgivable.” he murmurs.

Now that she has started, Rey thinks she might as well finish. She purses her lips. “And the worst of it is, I thought that _you_ were my friend.”

He shakes his head in contrition. “I let you down.”

“Yes.”

“I betrayed your trust.”

“Completely.”

“And I am so sorry. I feel like a shitty person - but I deserve that. It was wrong. I understand if you’re angry at me forever now but I just wanted to say that I can see how I made you feel, and even though I said it because I felt insecure and angry it still wasn’t right and I regret it so much. You _are_ my friend, Rey, and I drove you away and that’s my comeuppance, I guess. I hope you can forgive me but I’ll understand if you can’t. And, about what you said at the fair a few weeks ago –” His voice grows softer now. “I’m not ashamed of you. I – I think I was intimidated by you. I - most of the time, I half expected you to turn around and shit talk me to your friends, which ironically you probably do now, but in a fucked-up way, I think maybe -” She watches his Adam’s apple bob as his swallows. “I wanted to hurt you before you hurt me.”

She is feeling so many things, but predominantly, she is quite dumbfounded.

“At least you’re being honest.” she says evenly, shrugging. He grimaces in response.

“It’s like pulling teeth.”

She wants to smile then, for the love of god, she wants to smile and make him feel better about himself but all of the feminist literature she has read tells her that she is better than that. Instead, she says, “I think it comes with practice.”

There is a moment of further silence between them in which evening birds sing unseen and bees hum and the shouts of teenagers break the night air.

“Thank you for your apology.” she says and it is not as much of a strain as she’d thought it might be. “I – I _do_ forgive you. But I don’t think I want to be your friend anymore.”

He nods slowly.

“That’s… fair.” he says.

Rey wants more than anything to kiss him goodbye. But she is better than that; she is above looking back, it has become her signature skill.

“Have a good night, Ben.” she says and walks past him to join her friends inside.


	2. My Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [My Friend - Hayley Williams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CicAF4wE-Hw)   
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The truth is, I had no intention of dropping a 12k chapter on you all _as well as_ extending the chapter count, but sometimes our OTPs just take the wheel, don't they? (I can tell you now, editing a beast like this is not nearly as fun as writing it.) Nah, kidding, I adored writing this chapter.
> 
> Couple of things to note, Rey and Ben are finally legal adults in this chapter (huray!)  
> There is also a bit of a mad time jump in this chapter, all outlined pretty clearly, but basically to elaborate, it takes us from the first month of sixth form college (aged 16/17) to the first month of university (aged 18/19.)  
> I've left a couple of links in the end notes acknowledging some of the real life reference used in this chapter.
> 
> Also, seriously THANK YOU for the kudos and comments! It warms my heart and I hope this chapter is a worthy display of gratitude. I love these nerds and writing about them makes me so happy; having people read what I write about them is even more amazing.
> 
> ENJOY, my darlings.  
> xo

***

_My friend, when the blood has dried_

_My friend, instant alibi_

_You've seen me from every side_

_Still down for the ride_

***

It’s a nice house. A very nice house in fact. Rey can tell, despite the carnage of lager cans and bottles of clear or amber spirits scattered around like oversized confetti. The living room itself is the size of her whole flat - there are no less than three sets of french windows leading out into a garden so spacious that its expanse rolls out and disappears into the darkness of the night before she can make out its limits. There are bodies everywhere, her classmates from college, standing in huddles, reclining on the low L-shaped leather sofa, dancing wildly in the hallway. There are deflated balloons and shiny metal canisters on the glass coffee table, bowls of crisps that have long since been devoured or, in one case, thrown into the air in an attempt by one party guest to ‘make it rain’ - thankfully, Rey had not been caught in the crossfire.

She had finished her bottle of Cherry Lambrini an hour ago; she has always hated the taste but it’s cheap and beggars can’t be choosers when one looks as young as she does and still hasn’t gotten her hands on a fake ID. She is currently sipping on a very nasty gin and tonic which Poe has plied her with, which tastes all the more bitter because her previous drink had been so sweet, but at least it’s something. She is taking a moment to look around the room as her friends natter away beside her, Finn, Poe and Rose all happy drunk and acting silly.

It is then that she sees him, leaning against a wall, holding a small, green bottle of beer which looks frankly ridiculous given his size. Can he really have grown so much over the summer? Her heart twists a little to see that he is standing alone.

She turns back to her friends and tries to catch up with what they’re saying, which to no surprise is of little consequence. She can’t seem to get the image of the boy standing on his on the other side of the room out of her head.

 _You’re not a hero to those who don’t want to be saved,_ she reminds herself. Ben Solo has proved to her before that he neither needed or desired her help and it would be foolish to waste her time by going to his aid now. On throwing another quick glance across the room however, she can see him peering with apparent interest into his bottle like he has never seen such a contraption before and her brow creases.

She may not be a hero, but she isn’t heartless.

Making her decision, she extricates herself from her group, who barely notice her leave, so animated is their discussion, and makes her way slowly towards him. He does not look up, eyes fixed on the bottle clutched in his large hand. She gets very close to him then bumps his shoulder lightly with her own - having said that, it is more like her shoulder makes contact with the highest part of his body it can reach, which is his bicep.

“Oh, sorry -” he begins then sees her looking up at him. She is wearing a light smile, not exactly warm but not cold either. He blinks several times and she almost laughs.

“Hey,” she says.

His voice seems to catch a little in his throat.“Hi.”

“You’re here.”

“Yeah. So are you.”

“Long time no see.”

“I know. I didn’t realise you’d be - here tonight. I mean, I knew a lot of people were coming, but -”

“Everyone in the year was invited. I just came with my lot.” She nods her head, indicating her friends chattering away in the corner of the room. He nods somberly.

“I thought - I kind of thought you’d avoid me like the plague if we saw each other again.”

“I didn’t know you’d decided to do sixth form at Chesterfield,” she says, sidestepping the topic. “Weren’t you going to do an apprenticeship?”

“There wasn’t really a great deal going locally in the field I wanted to study.”

“Creatives run screaming from this town,” she smirks.

“Should I have said something?” he asks, frowning.

“Probably,” she shrugs.

“Sorry. I just… I thought if I tried to talk to you, I’d just piss you off, you know? I wasn’t sure what to do for the best.”

“What are you studying?” she asks.

“Creative Media. You?”

“Art and Design.

“Cool.”

Rey takes a deep breath and blows it out through her mouth. “Do you want a cigarette?”

“We don’t have to interact, Rey, if… you don’t have to stand here talking to me.”

“I know I don’t,” she replies simply. “Come on.”

She leads the way outside. The air is crisp and cool, the bite of autumn truly settling in. There are people running around on the large lawn and Rey is reminded of prom, when Ben had followed her outside onto a different patio. She lights her cigarette, watching the action and waits for Ben to stand beside her and do the same. She blows out a stream of smoke into the night air.

“Do you know anyone here, Ben?”

“No,” he says, a little sheepishly she thinks. “I don’t know why I’m even here, to be honest. I hate this kind of thing.”

“Why did you come?”

He glances at her and takes a deep pull on his straight before exhaling his own cloud of smoke.

“Maybe I’m trying to be more sociable.”

She raises her eyebrows and can’t help but smile in amusement. “So miracles are real.” He snorts and she sees, with a little pang, the dimple in his cheek that appears whenever he smiles. “You’re welcome to know me, if you want. Seeing as you don’t know anyone else.” He cocks an eyebrow at her, almost suggestively. “Not like that, dickhead.”

He really does smile now in earnest. “I was gonna say.”

“Been there, done that.”

“Not that it would be the worst thing in the world but -”

“Yeh, obviously, we -”

“We probably shouldn’t -”

“We’re better as friends.”

There is a small, infinitesimal pause before he says in a low voice, “Have we ever been friends before?”

“Well, no, I suppose not but - the other thing didn’t work out so anything has to be better than that, right?”

“Yeh, yeh, I guess you’re right. And presumably you and Poe are still -” he bobs his head from side to side. She watches him, perplexed. “You two _are_ still…”

“What?”

“Dating and stuff.”

“We were never dating. I thought I told you at prom, we were just - it was just as friends.”

“Oh. I thought you might be making less of it.”

“Why would I do that?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Spare my feelings or something.”

“Well, I wasn’t. We are very much in the friendzone, Poe and I. Don’t get me wrong, Rose in particular was very keen on the idea of us getting together for a bit...”

“What does it matter what she thinks?” he asks.

She looks him in the eye and says very matter-of-factly, “She’s my best friend.”

“Yeh, right,” he says, looking away and nodding like he has said something stupid. “Of course.”

“So, what do you think?” she says, unable to watch him suffer any longer. “Mates?”

He smiles and sighs in apparent relief. “That would be good.”

“Better than good, Solo,” she smirks, taking a drag on his cigarette and turning her head to watch the people continuing to run about on the grass. “I’m an excellent pal to have.”

Two Years Later 

Late September

Rey is browsing the shelves in front of her and for the life of her, she can’t decide which instant ramen is the one she wants. She gets like this sometimes, a little overwhelmed by possibility. It’s like capitalism is conspiring to confuse her by making the consumerist market so extensively vast it takes at least five minutes to browse the full selection of brands on offer for just a singular item on her shopping list. If she isn’t careful and strategic, a simple trip out to the shops becomes a rather time consuming activity.

In the end, she decides to play eanie-meanie-miney-mo. Her finger lands on a pot of rice noodles with freeze-dried kimchi. She tilts her head at the price: £1.50. Not as cheap as she would have liked, but not unreasonable, she supposes. She’s eaten kimchi once or twice at Rose’s house. She places it in her basket and moves down the aisle, now staring at the array of tinned soup flavours.

Rey moved to university in Bath just shy of four weeks ago. She is studying a course in Fine Art and her boyfriend, Justin, is studying Film on the same campus, though their lectures are usually at opposing times so they don’t tend to bump into one another often. They met in sixth form college back at home and have been together for about a year and a half now. They had decided several months ago to apply for the same universities in hopes that they would both be accepted and not have the weight of distance put on the relationship, or at least, that is how Justin had phrased it.

Her halls of residence are not far from the local high street. There aren’t any big supermarkets around, at least not within walking distance, but there are several corner shops and express markets to pop into whenever she needs a few bits. Her accommodation is a converted block of flats that used to be housing for nurses during the second world war. There are three flats to a block and eight rooms to each flat, so plenty of people share the small kitchen and two clinical bathrooms on her floor.

Despite living in such a big group of people, however, Rey has not yet managed to click with anyone in her dorms. She is the only one in the flat taking a subject in the arts, so she was immediately going to be on a different kind of wavelength from the others, that was a given. But she had hoped that there would be more conversation, more knocking on doors and getting to know one another, which so far, there has been none of. Justin had suggested that if she wanted to meet her flatmates so badly, she should take it upon herself to go from door to door introducing herself, and Rey could see the logic in this idea but lacked the conviction. Since moving to Bath, she has felt a persistent dull ache of anxiety in her stomach that just won’t eb. It’s natural, she supposes, but still inconvenient.

Justin, on the other hand, has settled in very well in his halls. He is situated on campus in a high rise of colourful modern flats where they seem to have three or four parties a week. She has visited him several times though has yet to meet his flatmates properly; they were usually in the communal kitchen/living area listening to loud techno and passing around a spliff whenever Rey came over but Justin would either tell her to wait in his room or if she followed him into the kitchen anyway, he would make the trip as brief as possible. Rey would usually stand there dumbly behind him, half-smiling and ready to catch somebody’s eye, but they would glance at her and back to Justin, never saying anything to her. It is pretty unfriendly behaviour, when she thinks about it but then, Justin could try to do more to integrate her. 

She is trying not to be upset with him over this though. Uni is for making lasting friendships and having fun just as much as it is about getting a degree, after all - perhaps even more so. It’s just that Rey really would have appreciated some of those friendships for herself by now.

A Facebook group had been set up for those on her course prior to Freshers Week and a mass gathering of Fine Art students had taken place for a big night out. She had hoped she would be able to bond with a few of her peers that evening but as it happens, most of them seemed to have formed their own groups already and had gone in together for a bag of pills which Rey wasn’t interested in taking. She had skirted the fringes of each clique for an hour or so at pre-drinks, but it was hard to break into the conversations of people who already seemed to know each other quite well. A convoy of taxis had taken them to a club called Dojo’s, which could very well have been the biggest dive Rey had ever stepped foot in, but it seemed her course mates were big fans of what they called ‘breakstep’ which seemed to be the same very, very long electronic song which changed tempo from time to time. At the bar, a bloke wearing a jumper with a picture of Mickey Mouse on the front, asked her if she liked this kind of music. She responded that it was alright but she was more of a pop punk kind of person.

“Pop punk?” he said, wrinkling his nose and grinning. “Aren’t those like, the two worst genres of music?”

For all they talked about how into the music they were, most of them spent the night in the smoking area. Rey was standing in the queue for the toilets when she started to feel hot and her throat became very dry. She left the club and went to stand out in the street where it was cool. She was finding it difficult to breathe. She tried calling Justin but he didn’t answer; fair enough, it was late, though she was sure he had said he had a party that night which was his reason as to why he couldn’t accompany her to her Freshers night that she had been nervous about - that and the fact that he wouldn’t feel ‘welcome’ among the art students, which would have at least made two of them.

Her basket is nearly full when her phone starts vibrating in her back pocket. She fumbles for a moment, looping the heavy carrier in the crook of her elbow and fishing into her pocket with her free hand. The name ‘Ben S’ is lighting up the screen. She smiles.

“Well, hello there,” she says cheerfully.

“Where’ve you been all my life?” His voice is rich and comfortingly familiar. They haven’t spoken person to person since they said goodbye back in their hometown.

“I’m a very, very busy person.”

“Oh, yeh? Tell me all about it.”

“Well, I am currently about to purchase the entire crisp aisle of a Tesco Metro.”

“Sounds expensive. You picked up moonlighting or something?”

“Remember what happened last time you insinuated that I was into sex work, Ben?” She reaches out for a box of peanut butter cereal bars and squints at the nutritional information on the back.

“Vividly. Forget I said anything.”

“I’ve got to check out in a minute actually. Can I call you when I get back?”

“Hm. How long will you be?”

“About twenty, twenty five. How come?”

“I have plans. Me and my room mate are going to a gig in town tonight.”

“Oh,” she says, blinking, forgetting the cereal bars. She isn’t sure why she is surprised that he has plans, she just hadn’t expected it.

“Yeh. They have rockers in Bristol too, go figure.”

“Sure, obviously, of course.”

“Yeh and I kind of need to get ready at some point so.”

Rey smirks. “What, like, put your leather jacket on?”

“Yeh, that’s pretty much it to be honest,” he laughs down the line.

“Well,” she continues. “If you can’t, it’s no problem. We can catch up another night.”

“Okay, yeh.”

“What band are you seeing?”

“They’re local. I forget the name. Stone something.”

“Stone Sour? Stone Roses? Stone Temple Pilots?”

“I never realised there were so many bands whose names start with the word ‘stone’.”

“See? Not just a pretty face.”

“I’ll catch you later, alright?”

“Yeh, have a good time. Have fun.”

“I will,” he says and she is halfway through telling him not to get into any trouble when the line goes dead. She glances at her phone screen just to make sure and is met with her background photo, a picture of Rose with dollops of whipped cream on her nose and cheeks. She tilts her head at the picture of her best friend, feeling a little bitter sweet. Perhaps once she is home she will try skyping her.

She hefts her basket a little higher up her arm and makes for the checkout.

October

**Ben S**

Fri 15 Oct, 20:36pm

Need help

Wasabi challenge. Excuses needed

Really good thanks Ben, how are you?

Sorry

I'm panicking

Not in life, just in this general moment

Life is great, there’s too much beer and music in this city to keep up with

Sounds like you’re having a whale of a time

Yeh it’s cool

But there are some people over and they’re all doing the wasabi challenge and now they want me to do it too

Why you?

Because everyone’s doing it

I don’t know 

Ben Solo, don’t tell me you’re… popular

What is popular? Is it some kind of disease?

You’re really one-upping me with this whole uni thing

How’s Bath?

bit grey this time of year but pretty busy, lots of tourists and nice architecture

Nightlife kind of underwhelming

Justin is having a great time

I’m sure it’ll get better. You’ll have to show me around when you’ve settled in

And drag you away from your new found fame? Wouldnt dream of it!

Then come here, there’s loads of space on the floor. My flatmate has an airbed

Tell them you’re allergic to wasabi

Who?

The people trying to make you do the challenge

Oh shit yeh

Is that a legit thing?

Just googled it

Nah, i’ll just tell them I’m busy skyping you

So i’m your cover story ??

Yeh, are you free?

Oh, you actually want to do a call?

Yeh, haven’t seen you in over a month

Unless you’re busy?

**Calling Ben S…**

November

Rey is sitting at a kitchen table she has only ever seen once before, clutching a cup of tea. The mug is black with the slogan ‘ _I like my coffee black just like my metal’_.

“I just feel so stupid,” she says, staring at the surface of her steaming brew. “I have to go to school with these people.”

Ben is sitting across from her, a plain white mug of his own sitting untouched on the table, the kind that could be bought in Ikea’s basic homeware section for 50p.

“You’re not the one who should be feeling stupid,” he says consolingly. “He’s the prick who’s been messing around. He should be fucking ashamed.”

Rey shakes her head, gritting her teeth.

She had taken the 10:32 train to Bristol that morning from Bath Spa and arrived in the city a prompt half an hour later. Ben had met her at the station and they had walked to his flat together. It was a pleasant walk that followed the river south. It had been raining before but has stopped now, though the sky is still overcast and grey outside the windows.

Last night, Justin and Rey had had another argument, something which had been happening increasingly over the last few months. He told her that he was finding it difficult to cope with how needy she had become lately and that he didn’t think he fancied her anymore. He had also said he’d been harbouring feelings for one of his flatmates, Georgia, who studied film with him. Rey has asked him if anything had happened between them and he told her she didn’t have the right to ask that question. Not one to linger where she wasn’t wanted, Rey had promptly bowed out and texted Ben at 6am that morning asking if she could visit.

“I just feel like, they must be together now in their flat with all their friends, laughing and happy and probably talking about how they want to get together and I was just this weird girl who was stopping them from doing that.”

He leans across the table so that they’re elbows knock together.

“Rey, listen to me. What they’re doing to you is fucking reprehensible and you don’t deserve it. They’re shit human beings - him especially.”

“You never liked him.”

“No, I didn’t, he’s a fucking pansy. You’re not in anyone’s way of anything, _ever._ You are the touchstone by which people should measure everything they do. You’re not an inconvenience, you’re a saint and anyone who treats you otherwise ought to be crucified in my opinion.”

She laughs a little self-consciously, taken aback by his words. “Jesus, Ben.”

“Honestly, I’d kill him if you let me,” he says, quite matter-of-factly. “Will you let me?”

“No, you psycho,” she laughs in spite of everything that is happening to her.

She continues to examine the surface of her tea, wishing it were something stronger. As if he can read her mind, Ben says, “Do you fancy a pint?”

“What, now?”

He nods. “There’s a bar round the corner, it’s on a river boat. I think they sail off in January when things are quieter but they have a roof terrace. It’s nice. I went there with Mitaka last weekend.”

She checks her watch. It’s 12:30.

“Can I stay tonight?” she asks.

“I assumed you were,” he says.

March

There are seven rooms in the club, all with their own DJ playing a different derivative genre of house music. The floor, the walls, the humid, smoke-saturated air is all pulsating but in a good way. Rey can feel it in her stomach.

When Ben had told her about the party, she had been skeptical. Her previous experience of nightclubs is limited at best and has never ended positively. However, Ben had been to the same event night, Tribe of Frog, once before and had loved it, so, because it was him, and it was Bristol, a city she is becoming very fond of the more she visits, she had decided it was worth a whirl.

Now, as the bass rings through her body like a drug all on its own, she knows she has made the right decision. 

The floor is sticky beneath her trainers but on the bright side, it helps her keep her balance. She sips from a pint can of cider, something everyone in this city drinks apparently, and it is sweet and fizzy on her tongue. The relentless thumping beat is a living thing, moving her muscles like a marionette as she hops from side to side, bobbing her head and rolling her hips. She feels wonderful, more so than she has in as long as she can remember, especially the last few months.

She never, ever thought that she would be witness to Ben Solo, die hard metal music extremist, getting his groove on to music made predominantly using computer software, but sometimes it is okay to be wrong, she supposes. His long dark hair is bouncing with every movement he makes, some tendrils sticking to his sweaty face. His eyes are closed. He looks... what’s the word? _Transported_.

In many ways, Bristol has become her home away from home away from home. Since the break up, she has visited Ben almost every other weekend. This place is brighter, more colourful, broader and more exciting than Bath. She can see why Ben is thriving here. And he truly is thriving. In the midst of the overwhelming music and fluorescent lights and luminescent graffiti adorning the club’s walls, he looks like an illustration in a graphic novel of a night out: bold and beautiful.

She knows that she must keep her hands to herself, because that’s what friends do. They don’t fancy each other. They don’t think about the line of one another’s jaw or the precise curve of their brow or ripping their dark sweatshirt from their body in order to kiss their abdomen.

Maybe they haven’t ever really been friends at all.

Ben, like he knows what she is thinking, like he always seems to know what she is thinking, turns to look at her in that moment and his eyes are glittering like wet coal. He smiles and reaches out a hand to grab the hem of her top, tugging it like he is trying to keep her close. Instinctively, she places her own hand over the top of his and takes a step closer to him. His head dips down towards hers and they look into each other’s eyes for a very long time.

In the taxi on the way home, Ben reaches out to take Rey’s hand and she squeezes it in response.

Summer

“I can’t believe I’m not going to see you before I go, Rey-Rey,” Rose laments sadly through the receiver. “It’s already been so long - we won’t even get to have your belated birthday cocktails!”

“Don’t worry about that,” Rey reassures her. “We’ll do something when you’re back. Or are you going to try to come back for Christmas?”

“I don’t know. The flights are so expensive. I wouldn’t be able to afford it and uni aren’t going to pay for non-essential travel. If my parents can do it then there’s a slim chance, I suppose.”

“So who will you spend Christmas with if you can’t come back home?” Rey asks, shocked and saddened for her friend. She can picture Rose shrugging her shoulders when she answers.

“A bumper pack of spring rolls and a blunt, I guess.”

Rose has been accepted onto an Erasmus placement in Holland for the next academic year. She will be vacating her halls of residence next week, moving everything into storage in her parents garage and promptly flying out with them and her sister, Paige, on a three week holiday to Vietnam visiting relatives. Her flight to Amsterdam is scheduled for two days after she is due to return from Southeast Asia and she plans to spend the majority of those forty eight hours packing.

“I’m gonna miss you,” says Rey. “I already do. Maybe I could come and visit?”

“Please do. I’ve been trying to learn some Dutch and it is _hard._ I don’t want to be the British girl who needs everyone to speak English all the time so at this rate, it looks like I’ll hardly be talking at all. And on top of that, my boyfriend doesn’t want to come and visit me despite the fact that he’ll be in Europe at the same time. Anyway, I feel sufficiently stressed out about my life now, how about yours?” Rose asks.

“Finn will come around, he’s just being daft at the moment,” Rey says, dodging Rose’s question.

“It’s the longest damn moment I’ve ever heard of,” she snorts bitterly then persists, “What’s new with you?”

Rey bites her lip. There is alot to talk about but at the same time, not much at all.

“Difficult question, that,” she says, trying to buy herself some time while she works out an answer.

“Okaaay,” Rose replies, giggling. “I’m intrigued.”

“You might not be,” Rey continues. “I have some news actually. I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell people.”

“Okay. What is it? Should I be worried?”

“No, no,” she responds quickly. “It’s not bad, in fact, I think it’s going to be really good for me.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re back with Justin.”

“ _Fuck_ no,” she spits indignantly. _Time to bite the bullet._ “I… okay, well, I’ve dropped out of Bath.”

There is a long pause on the other end of the phone. Rey is about to say ‘hello?’ when she hears her best friend speak.

“Why?”

It’s a simple question, one that has far too many answers.

“The course wasn’t really what I expected and I don’t really know anyone there, even after all these months,” she supplied.

“Have you tried?”

Rey is a little offended at this question. “Yes, of course I have. They just aren’t my kind of people.”

“But you might meet someone next year. No matter where you are, there are always groups where you can fit in. Is that all that’s putting you off?”

Rey picks at a hole in the corner of her duvet. “I really wasn’t happy, Rosie.”

She rolls onto her back and stares up at the ceiling of her old bedroom.

She’d got back yesterday, paid a guy with a van to drive her and her things back home from Bath. He had helped her carry her various suitcases, boxes and bin bags up the many flights of stairs, though he had charged her for an extra half an hour for the effort.

There had been no sign of her mother in the flat, despite her knowing that Rey was due to arrive home that day. Leaving Bath had felt like a weight being lifted from her chest; coming back to live in the apartment she grew up in is like having a different one placed on her shoulders instead. She hasn’t discussed her plans with anyone so far, but she had withdrawn from her course after the end of year exams and now, an uncertain future lies ahead of her.

“I don’t want you to be unhappy,” Rose says delicately. “But do you really want to move back in with your mum?”

“Obviously not, but I’m not exactly spoilt for choice at the moment.”

“I just think you should keep your options open. What are you going to do now?”

“Work for a year, save. I could reapply next year, somewhere different.” She pauses before she says the next sentence. “Bristol looks really good.”

“Hm,” Rose hums her acknowledgement of what she’s said. “Just because Ben likes it there doesn’t mean you will.”

Rey is starting to get pretty pissed off with her friend now. It seems whatever she is planning to do is wrong in Rose’s opinion.

“I _do_ like it there actually. I’ve been to visit enough times.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that,” Rose says, sounding surprised. In all fairness, Rey hasn’t ever mentioned the fact that she’s seen Ben almost every weekend since she and Justin broke up.

“Yeh, well, it’s not far from Bath and seeing as I had literally no friends down south, I went to see him a lot.”

“Rey-Rey -” Rose says her name in a tone of alarm now. “You’re not sleeping with him are you?”

She feels her face redden, even though she is alone. This is the closest anyone has ever gotten to directly asking about the nature of her relationship with Ben.

“No, of course not,” she says quickly because that, at least, is true: she hasn’t had sex with Ben since they were in Year 11. “We’re friends. We _can_ just be friends - I know you don’t like it but it’s true.” She adds the last part just to be spiteful because she doesn’t want to talk about this anymore; she wants her best friend in the world to be supportive, to understand how unhappy she was living in Bath, to tell her that she has made the right decision in dropping out of university, yet so far she is failing cataclysmically.

“Whatever, if I don’t like it, it’s only because he was a dick to you in school,” Rose fires back. “I’m just looking out for you because you obviously can’t pick them very well.”

Rey’s breath catches in her throat and a flush of heat rises up her cheeks.

“So what,” she says quietly. “I have bad taste in men? It’s my fault if they treat me badly because I pick them like that?”

“I’m not saying that,” Rose responds but instead of saying it softly, comfortingly, her voice is raised in apparent exasperation. “Can you not put words in my mouth? I’d obviously never say that to you.”

“Just behind my back, I guess,” she retorts bitterly.

Rose simply says, “Wow.”

“I think I should go,” Rey says, trying to keep her voice even as her lower lip trembles. There is another pause.

“Are we just going to leave it like this?” Rose asks in a shaky voice.

“I don’t think I want to speak to you right now,” Rey garbles quickly. “Bye.”

Her friend is still speaking when Rey disconnects the line. She takes a deep, steadying breath, staring at her curtain pole, then jerks her phone out of her hand so that it hits the thin blue carpet with a thud and bounces somewhere under her desk. She takes another breath, sits up, dangling her legs over the edge of the bed. She is too tall for it now, her feet poke over the end; she wonders how the hell she and Ben used to fit in it together.

The way Rose is reacting, anyone would think Rey has taken the decision to leave uni lightly - in fact, the only thing stopping her from dropping out sooner had been the fear of what people would say when she told them she would be going to live back at home. Rose is the first person out of her friendship circle that she has told and now, given her response, Rey is afraid of how others will react.

She feels utterly let down by her best friend, who was supposed to make her feel better about this whole shitty year. It isn’t like she had made much of an effort to visit Rey when it transpired that Justin was cheating on her. And now, she is off to Amsterdam and who knows when they will next see each other, speak to each other?

 _No time soon_ , Rey thinks to herself. She isn’t happy and for once, she allows herself the right to be pissed off.

She decides she needs to clear her head with a walk so slides on her old trainers and sunglasses and leaves the flat, meeting no one on her way out the door.

It is shaping up to be a hot summer, though she isn’t sure how much she’ll get to see of it. She has already dropped a CV in at a few local pubs and the supermarket she worked at as a teenager has given her a starting contract of ten hours every weekend with a view to increasing the number as summer goes on. At present, she is the only one out of her old school friends who has come back home this early; Rose obviously has her holiday plans ironed out down to the last minute, and Finn and Poe have both decided to work for the first few weeks in London before going interrailing around Europe,

Ben is due to come back next week. He is moving his things out of halls and into a new rented flat with his friend, Mitaka, in the city. Leia is supposed to be driving down to help them move. At this rate, Rey is in for a long and boring week of waiting.

She had hoped to feel a little better, a little happier, when she got home and extricated herself from Bath for good but instead she just feels deflated more than anything. When her mum had finally made an appearance the night before, it had been by stumbling in through the front door, falling over and subsequently snapping her key in the lock which they will now have to pay to get it refitted before one of the more unsavory characters in her building realises their door won’t lock. Rey had helped her to the sofa and put the kettle on before her mum had said so much as ‘hello’. It isn’t the homecoming she had previously wished for, but then again, it isn’t exactly surprising either.

Her phone starts to vibrate in her back pocket and Rey grimaces, praying it isn’t Rose calling again to give her a talking to about cutting her off in the middle of an argument. On checking it however, she is bolstered to see that Ben’s name is lighting up the screen and slides the green arrow across the touchpad to answer straight away.

“Hey,” she says cheerfully.

“Guess where I am,” he responds, dispensing with any formal greeting.

“Um,” she hums, pursing her lips in thought. “Bristol?”

“No.”

“No?” she asks, frowning.

“No,” he says. “Guess again.”

“Florida? Japan? New Mexico? The Bermuda Triangle -”

“Seriously, guess!”

Rey’s expression breaks out into an uncontrollable smile. “You’re not-”

“Yes, I am,” he says and she can almost hear him grinning on the other end.

“You’re back?” she squeals excitedly, all of her melancholy from a minute ago vanished.

“This morning. Mitaka’s parents came to help us move instead of my mum, so we dropped our shit off in the new place at the weekend and I caught a train back this morning.”

“You’re fucking kidding me!” she cries. “Oh my god, I’m so happy, I can’t even tell you!”

“Are you about?” he asks.

“Of course!”

“Wanna come over? Or I could come to you or we could go for a drink, whatever.”

“I’m on my way,” she says happily, positively beaming, so hard her cheeks hurt a bit.

“Sweet. We can sit out, it’s a nice day.”

“I know, I’m just walking around now. I haven’t got my bike so I’ll be like, an hour.”

“I’ll come and meet you halfway.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s cool, I’ve got nothing on. We’ll meet in the middle, yeh?”

“Yeh,” she sings, doing a little step to herself on the pavement. “I’ll see you soon then.”

She walks _very_ quickly.

The rays of mid-afternoon sun are beating down and there is a distinct lack of any kind of breeze, so by the time Ben’s tall, dark figure comes into view, she is sweating like she’s just climbed a volcano. He raises an eyebrow at her as the draw close.

“Are you okay?” he asks and she nods, panting but smiling.

“You’ve got longer legs than me so I walked faster.”

“Shit, kid, you didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s so hot.”

He eyes the damp patches of sweat on her top. “Yeh, it is.”

Together, they continue on to his house, at a mercifully slower pace this time, and catch up on their most recent news - not that there’s a great deal to talk about seeing as they speak every other day.

When they crunch up the gravel driveway, Rey can see from the four wheel drive in the open garage that Leia is at home and suddenly realises how excited she is to see her. She’s always liked Leia because she is kind and funny and cooks family dinners and nags Ben to do his laundry, which doesn’t sound like a reason to like someone but it just shows Rey that the concept of ‘normal parents’ isn’t, in fact, a myth like she has often suspected.

Ben opens the unlocked front door and gestures for her to go inside first. Usually Rey would take off her shoes on Leia’s plush cream carpets, but she doesn’t want to stink out the hallway on the first time she’s seen her in a year.

“Mum!” Ben shouts. “Rey’s here.”

A voice from the kitchen calls back, “Bring her in!”

They go to the kitchen where Leia is standing at the white marble island in the centre of the bright room, typing away on the keyboard of an expensive looking laptop. She looks up as Rey enters, smiling politely. “Hello, love, it’s good to see you!”

“Hi Leia,” she replies, smiling back. “How are you?”

“Just great, honey, just great. The sun’s out, my boy’s back and it’s lasagne night, what more could I want?” she says.

“Can Rey stay for dinner?” Ben asks, walking nonchalantly to the fridge and pulling out two cans of Pepsi.

“Oh, I don’t want to get in your way if -” Rey begins.

“I’ll be honest with you, as soon as Ben told me he was coming back, I prepped a feast. Look at the size of him, can you believe it?” Leia says, standing back to marvel at her son as if it is the first time she has seen him since last August. “Don’t ask me where he gets it from, anyone would think I’d played away with his Uncle Chewie.”

Rey can’t help but let out a guffaw of laughter at that, but Ben says sharply, “Mum!”

“Hey, I’m kidding, come on. I can see you haven’t developed a sense of humour at college,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“Jokes about my parentage don’t count as particularly funny in my books, Leia,” he says, handing Rey an ice cold can and walking towards the french windows leading out to the garden. “We’ll be outside,” he adds and Rey isn’t sure if it is for her benefit or Leia’s, but she goes to follow him anyway.

“Nice to see you,” she says.

“You too, hun,” Leia smiles warmly before turning back to her laptop once again, her face falling into a serious kind of calculating look almost instantly.

“She’s not changed, as you can see,” Ben says, cracking open his drink can.

“She’s great,” Rey responds simply.

“She’s not your mother,” he says, wrinkling his nose, and Rey very nearly says back ‘if only’ but manages to catch herself at the last second.

The garden is a sea of jade and emerald, the apple tree in full blossom with pale pink flowers and Rey’s favourite hammock hanging from it like always. In a fit of joy, she lets out an excited peel of laughter and skips towards it, sliding down into its netted cradle, her backside nearly touching the grass as the material stretches to accommodate her weight. She kicks her feet up, reclining and sighing happily.

“I’m back,” she breathes.

“Someone’s happy to be home,” he says, plonking his large form down onto the same patch of grass he usually occupies when they are here. It occurs to her then, seemingly out of nowhere, that he has never quibbled about her always taking the hammock.

“It isn’t Bath, so I’m very happy.”

“God, you really don’t like it there, do you?” he asks, sipping from his Pepsi.

“How can you tell?”

“Why don’t you transfer? People can do that, right? There’s a girl on my course who’s going to Edinburgh to live with her dad so she’s just picking up on a course there at second year.”

Rey crosses her ankles and plays with the ring pull on her can uncomfortably. She is still yet to tell Ben that she has dropped out, but following Rose’s reaction earlier, she isn’t sure she wants to approach the subject again today, not now that she is feeling cheerful again. She decides to sidestep the topic entirely.

“Maybe. I’m just glad to have some time off to lie in your hammock all summer - when I’m not in work obviously.”

“You’ve got a job already?” he asks, seemingly taken aback.

“Just at the shop again, a few hours a week, nothing strenuous.”

“Yeh, don’t kill yourself,” he says, leaning back on his elbows. “Summer’s for chilling big.”

Rey twists her neck so quickly to look at him that she gets a crick in it. Rubbing it, she says, “Did you just say ‘chilling big’?”

He grins bashfully. “I’ve been spending too much time with Mitaka. He uses certain terms in an ironic way - thing is he says them so often, I don’t think it’s actually ironic anymore. He says ‘LOL’ a lot too.”

“No!” Rey groans, chuckling to herself. “You cannot start saying ‘LOL’ or I won’t have anyone to hang out with this summer.”

“What about your other friends?” he asks.

“They’re all out of town, didn’t I tell you?” she says innocently, though she knows damn well that she hasn’t mentioned it before now. “Rose is in Vietnam before Erasmus and Finn and Poe are going travelling.”

“Travelling where?”

“Interrailing Europe.”

“Lucky guys,” he says. “So is it just you and me for ten weeks?”

“If you’ll have me,” she shrugs, adjusting her sunglasses.

“Obviously, you’re my best friend,” he replies.

She tilts her head to look at him again and his face is completely impassive.

“Am I?” she asks.

“Yeh, of course.”

She smiles. “You’re my best friend too, Ben.”

He laughs. “Don’t give me a pity best friend.”

“I’m not!” she cries, also laughing. “I mean it, I just don’t think we’ve said it before.”

“Does it need saying?” he asks. “Anyway, I thought Rosie was your best friend?”

She doesn’t let the smile slip from her face but has to swallow a lump that has suddenly appeared in her throat. “I can have two best friends.”

“Fair enough,” he shrugs, tearing up a fistful of grass at his hip before changing the topic. “I’m meeting up with my old crowd tonight for drinks. You fancy coming along?”

“Who, like Hux and Gwen?”

“Nailed it in one.”

She purses her lips slightly. “You don’t have to pity-invite me to things just because I’m Billy No-Mates right now.”

He rolls his eyes, grinning. “Jesus, I’m not. I just like hanging out with you, is it still so hard to believe?”

A small voice in the back of her mind says without hesitation, ‘ _yes_ ’. She sweeps it aside, flicking her hair over her shoulder, still damp with sweat at the base of her scalp.

“Alright, I’ll go for a drink with you and your mates.” She tilts her head back to face the sun, letting it dry the cooling perspiration on her temples. “Feels like I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.”

“What can I say? The people love me,” he replies and she can hear the jest in his voice.

Later that evening, Rey finds herself at an old stomping ground for many local youngsters in the town: The Crown, a very cheap, very cramped pub with an _extremely_ relaxed stance on ID checks. As a matter of fact, Rey is presently watching two very tall, skinny boys and a girl so short in contrast to her companions that it looks comical, sidling up to the bar and leaning against it with exaggerated casualness that is entirely unwarranted in this establishment. A small smile curves her mouth as she remembers the first time she’d come in with Rose and Finn, wearing her unmarked school blouse with a pair of skinny jeans and dark heeled boots in an attempt to make herself look older. Reader, it had not worked - but in this place, it never mattered.

They had left Ben’s more or less straight after dinner. Rey had been feeling sleepy from the lasagne baby swelling in her stomach and a little bit self-conscious at the prospect of meeting Ben’s old friends who, as far as she knew, had never liked her. She is wearing an old baggy top and simple denim shorts and Ben has lent her a red and black flannel shirt in case it gets cold later, having not brought a jacket of her own.

Gwen is dressed like something out of a Ridley Scott film on steroids: there are metal studs in her nose, eyebrows, ears and lips and her white blonde hair is styled into a wet-looking pixie cut which, Rey has to admit, looks very good on her. She is wearing black patent leather boots up to the knee with platforms that must be at least three inches thick, a pair of black jeans with a studded belt draping around her hips and a plain vest top, also black, which demonstrates her considerable cleavage. Hux, quite in the opposite direction, is wearing a navy blue shirt buttoned all the way up and tucked into brown chinos. 

Rey sips on the dregs of her double whiskey and lemonade through a paper straw and listens to the others talk. Gwen and Hux, while not directly ignoring her, have not made the effort so far to engage her in a conversation that didn’t begin and end with the word ‘hi’ but every now and again, Ben ropes her into their discussion in some way or another. She is currently wondering whether to go out for a cigarette and stay for a little longer or to count her losses and just go home, not one to hang around where her company isn’t desired. She fishes in her pocket for her pouch of tobacco.

To her surprise, Hux addresses her then.

“How do you stomach that crap?” he says, his nose wrinkled. She blinks, unsure how to respond at first.

“Ugh, it’s alright really. It’s cheap, you know,” she says, offering a self-deprecating half-smile. _‘I know, what am I like, being so poor?’_

“I know it’s cheap, I asked how you can stomach it?” he goes on, drumming his pale fingers against the rim of his pint; he is drinking a dark ale and flakey sediment has set in the bottom of the glass which means the barrel probably needs to be changed. She thinks about asking him the same question but she doesn’t want to start a bickering match which could embarrass Ben.

“Don’t be rude, Armie,” Ben says in a level tone. _Speak of the devil and he shall appear._

“How is it rude? I’m just stating a fact, it’s disgusting, that stuff.” Hux is continuing to chomp at this particular bit and Rey is starting to get a little disgruntled at his lip now.

“Didn’t I hear once you used to steal your dad’s cigars to smoke back in school? Now they’re gross, I can tell you,” she says in a casually light tone but the teasing in her words is evident. To her further surprise, Gwen laughs at her remark, which she finds she appreciates greatly. Knowing it is best to bow out on the last word, she stands and says, “I’m gonna head anyway, guys. It was nice seeing you again, Gwen.”

“It’s Phasma, no one calls me Gwen,” she says in a flat tone. _So much for my new pal_ , thinks Rey.

“Okay, well. Good night I -”

“Hang on, let me finish my drink,” Ben says, standing up too and raising his pint glass to his lips. There is still half a lager in the bottom of it.

“Wait, are you - what are you doing?” she asks, confused. He quirks an eyebrow at her.

“I thought you said we were going home?”

“Yeh, I - I mean, _I_ was. You don’t have to.”

“Aren’t you staying at mine tonight?” he asks, tilting his head. She blinks.

“Oh, yeh, okay. Yeh, that’d be nice. I don’t want to make you leave though, we can stay -”

“I’ve got the rest of summer to go and my student loan isn’t going to stretch very far if I stay out until gone midnight all the time,” he says, shouldering his leather jacket. “If you’re ready?”

“Cool, okay. Bye then, you guys,” she says, unable to help herself from smiling as she raises a hand in farewell to Hux and Phasma who aren’t looking at her.

Outside, it’s still moderately warm despite the sun having set fully now. The walk back to Ben’s isn’t far and takes them about forty minutes.

“Sorry about Armie,” he says as they pass through the park. “He’s a right puffin from time to time but he’s not all bad.”

“He was perfectly polite the whole time he was ignoring me,” she remarks sniffily. “He’s so judgy - not just to me, all the time you guys were talking, he kept picking up on things and correcting you and Gw- _Phasma_. I don’t know how it doesn’t do your head in.”

He is quiet for a moment. “He’s had a bit of a shit life. His dad’s a cock; military, really strict. I don’t know about his mum.”

“Is she dead or something?”

“No, no, nothing like that. They’re still together, he just doesn’t talk about her.”

Rey inhales imperiously. “Sounds like a woman-hater to me.”

“Well, I’m sorry he was rude to you anyway. You didn’t have a completely shit night, did you?”

She softens. “No, not at all. It was sort of interesting to see you with them actually, I never saw you guys talk much in school even though you always hung out together.”

“Rejects attract,” he mused.

“I don’t think you’re a reject.”

“Not now maybe,” he grimaces at that and Rey wonders if all the social attention he has been receiving at uni is really something he enjoys.

They arrive home at ten minutes past midnight, treading quietly so as not to wake Leia who as a rule tends to go to bed before ten to read. They kick off their shoes in the hallway, Rey still conscious of the smell of her feet now that she has been walking around in her old trainers all day, and the pair of them tip-toe up the stairs to Ben’s room. Once inside, he goes to close the door then says, “Oh, did you want a glass of water?”

“Are you getting one?” she whispers.

“Yeh.”

She nods and he leaves to creep back to the kitchen. Rey goes to his bed and flicks the switch of his bedside lamp. She hasn’t got any pyjamas so will need to ask Ben if she can borrow some bottoms; her loose top should be fine.

He arrives back in the now dimly lit room holding two large glasses of tap water. Rey takes hers and drinks down several gulps. When she sets it on the bedside table, Ben is watching her, sipping from his own glass.

“Thirsty?” he asks evenly.

“It’s hot,” she replies.

“I’ll crack a window,” he says, leaning over the width of his bed to push open the top pane. It’s a double mattress so it says something about his size that he is able to reach all the way across it and then some without straining too much. Rey blinks a few times when she becomes aware that she is staring at his broad torso and mentally chides herself.

“Hey, can I borrow some pyjama bottoms?” she asks for something to distract herself.

He moves to the dresser by the desk and pulls open the lowest drawer, picking out a selection of very large sweatpants and throwing them to her.

“I have more but they’re in my suitcase and I haven’t even thought about tackling that yet,” he says, sitting down on the bed.

She elects for the pair with the lightest material, green tartan, and Ben respectfully turns his back for her to pull off her shorts. A flush of heat ripples up her spine as she sits there for a moment in just her underwear and she knows it has nothing to do with the humid air in the room.

She climbs under the duvet and flumps back against the pillows. “Alright, you’re safe,” she says, folding her shorts and laying them over the bed frame. He turns and sees her sitting in his bed.

“Oh.”

“Wait, are we not - was I not supposed to get in with you?”

“No, no, it’s totally fine -”

“I’ll get out,” she says, throwing the covers back and swivelling her legs off the side of the mattress.

“Rey, stop, it’s not that - it’s -”

“It’s fine, I’ll sleep on the floor, or the sofa, I don’t mind -”

“It’s just been a long time since I’ve seen you in my bed,” he says quickly, like it is something he needs to get out of his system.

It is her turn to say, “Oh.”

“Seriously, it’s fine. Get back under the covers.” Ben turns away from her then so she has no reason to argue with him and resituates herself against his pillows with less zeal this time, thinking herself now about the last time she had laid in his bed. Years ago, before a lot of things happened.

She averts her eyes when he removes his dark t-shirt then just before he puts on a grey cotton vest, she thinks ‘ _What the hell_ ’ and steals her chance, surreptitiously glancing up at him.

His body has changed a lot since they were teenagers. His pectoral muscles are positively _huge_ and there is a line of dark hair trailing from his belly button down below his jeans. And his stomach? Oh, his stomach. Pale skin dotted with dark beauty spots and moles stretched tightly over a toned, strong-looking abdomen, the kind of abdomen she wants to press her palm against to see how much it will resist her, or sink her teeth into to see how pliant the flesh there is -

She looks away, staring fixedly down at her lap as he drops his trousers and pulls on the pair of pyjama bottoms she had forgone before climbing into bed beside her. They lie there together for several moments, looking at the ceiling.

“Good night, kid,” he says quietly before turning out the light and rolling away from her.

She lies in the dark for an indeterminable amount of time. It is too fucking hot in this room and her mind feels like it is burning up along with her body, thoughts and fantasies running through her head at an alarming speed. Her legs feel hot. She wants to slip the pyjamas off but thinks it could get awkward if Ben were to notice, so she does it as surreptitiously as she can, unable to stand the itchy heat any longer, mercifully slipping one leg out of the furnace beneath his covers when she has accomplished her task. She finds that her breathing is off and sounds very loud in the quiet space. She inhales and exhales with deliberate precision, trying to settle into a gentle, steady rhythm that will coax her restless body to sleep.

It isn’t fucking working. 

All she can think about is the landscape of Ben’s back.

She shuffles as slowly and silently as she can to face his body. When did he get so big? He has always been a big guy and not in an overweight kind of sense but a Dwayne the Rock Johnson kind of sense. His shoulders are so broad and their blades move delicately beneath the sheet of his pale skin as he breathes in and out, like tiny machines, hypnotic.

“Rey?” he breathes suddenly.

“Yeh?” she responds just as quietly.

He rolls over to face her and his eyes are glittering dark onyx in the light of the moon slivering through a gap in the curtains. He simply looks at her and she cannot tell what the expression on his face means, mouth ever so slightly open.

His hand moves beneath the covers and his fingers hook beneath her left knee. She lets it happen, feels her heart rate spike, a pulse of excitement sparking below her navel.

He swallows and murmurs, “Is this okay?” She nods and he says, “Say it.”

She hasn’t realised that her eyes have closed until she opens them to look into his. “I like it.”

He shuffles closer to her and uses the hand under her knee to hoist her bent leg over his own, letting it rest there as his fingers move up to roam across her thigh, then slowly, teasingly over the warm flesh of her bum.

“How about this?”

“Yeh, it’s good,” she hums in an airy tone, already feeling like she is drifting on a tide of zero gravity.

His travelling hand slips over the small of her back and underneath her shirt. The concave of her spine is damp with sweat from the warm room. His fingers tickle the skin there. Reflexively, she arches her pelvis towards his body, her hitched leg hooking over his so that they’re calves are tangled, hip bones pressed together. She feels the wind of his breath on her clavicle and his head bows towards it, kissing her there lightly, feather-soft.

“How about this?” he breathes, lips pressed against her skin and all she can do is let out a low moan. He kisses her collarbone and the dip of her shoulder and the thin flesh of her neck. He is hot, she is hot, so much that a wave of perspiration breaks out on her upper lip and she licks it away, salty on her tongue. His hand moves again, stroking a path over the rise of her rib cage towards her stomach then down, down, _down_.

When his hand slips beneath the elastic of her underwear, she can feel his fingertips through her curls. Any moment now, they will touch her right where she wants, right where she needs -

She lets out a gasp. 

The pad of his index finger draws soft circles around her clitoris, massaging it in the most gentle, seamless rhythm. Had he always been this good? She likes to think so, but that can’t be possible for two reasons: one, he must have improved his technique over the years by practicing with other women, because she certainly can’t have been the last person he slept with, and two, if he really had been this good before, how had she ever dumped him?

“Yeh?” he says suddenly, stopping the glorious motion of his fingers to her intense consternation.

“What?” she asks.

“You said my name,” he supplies. “If you want to stop, it’s okay.”

She doesn’t remember doing as he claims but is appreciative of the sincerity in his tone. She leans forward and kisses him on the mouth for the first time in years.

“I don’t want you to stop,” she says quietly against his lips. She feels him smile in the dark as he carries on his ministrations between her legs. She is slick where his fingers move against her, not a hint of resistance between their skin.

When one of his digits slips inside her, she lets out a groan that is louder than she’d intended and he places his lips over hers again.

“Sorry,” she moans, panting as he continues to move inside her.

“Don’t apologise,” he says, resting his hot forehead against hers. “I want to make you feel good.”

“You do,” she replies breathlessly. “You always make me feel good.”

“I can do better,” he murmurs and pushes his long finger deeper inside, eliciting another moan which she stifles this time by clamping her lips together. “I want you to cum, Rey. I want to feel your pussy nice and hot and tight around my fingers, and I want you to cum in my hand. You’re so wet, I love how wet you are.”

The things he is saying are so lewd and equally so soft that she feels her pelvic muscles tighten and her hips buck and grind instinctively against his hand.

“That’s it,” he goes on. “You’re so pretty like this. Open your eyes for me, girl.”

She does, once again not having realising they have fallen closed, and is met with his smoking gaze. He is watching her, every little movement on her face, every twitch and shudder she makes like she is the most fascinating thing he has ever laid eyes on. She kisses him again, this time with her eyes open.

“I want you to fuck me,” she breathes quickly, pulling her mouth from his.

For a second, his eyes flutter shut too. Then he nods, opens them again and rolls her onto her back in one swift movement, a peel of breathless laughter erupting from her throat. He smiles broadly at her, teeth glinting in the dark. He kneels on the mattress between her spread legs and removes his vest top and pyjama bottoms so that he is just in his underwear, marled grey boxer shorts. He leans over her and gently tugs on the rim of her baggy top, lifting it lightly over her head as she sits up to make the process easier. They stare at each other in the dim light for a moment or two, grinning stupidly. Then they both reach down to remove their respective underwear.

Ben has never been the type of person one would call underdeveloped, but when Rey lays her eyes on his penis again after so many years, she can see that he had certainly not finished growing when they were sixteen.

It’s - there really isn’t any other way to describe it - _enormous._

“Holy fuck…” she breathes, eyes wide. He is about to open his mouth when she cuts across him. “It’s okay, really.” She exhales, looking down at his cock as it stands to attention in the moonlight. She feels pleased that he is this hard without even needing to touch him, simply by fingering her he had stiffened up like she had her hand or mouth around him. Speaking of which…

She reaches out to stroke her fingertips delicately along his shaft and he hisses, rolling his head back.

“Rey…” he says. “If you want me to fuck you now, you’ve gotta stop that.”

She blinks up at him, wide-eyed and quietly thrilled.

“Are you…?”

“Yeh,” he exhales heavily.

“Okay,” she says, lying back against his pillows. He leans down, placing his hands either side of her head and allowing their stomachs to press flush against one another. She can feel his hardness poking her right thigh just below her bottom and the need to have him inside her heightens with dramatic intensity.

“Are you ready?” he asks, meeting her gaze.

She lifts her palm to his face, scratching the hair behind his ears lightly with her fingernails and nods.

He pushes in and it’s _tight_ , but not terrible. Afterall, it’s been a while for her and he is much larger than she is used to. She takes a few steady breaths in and out.

“Okay?” he grunts, sounding pained.

“Yeh, it’s good. Is there more?”

“Yeh.”

“Okay, keep going.”

“Are you sure?”

She sighs, tiring a little of this question, and tilts her head back slightly. “Talk to me while you do it.”

A glimmer of dark lust passes over his face and Rey swears she sees his pupils blow wider.

“What do you want to hear?” he asks softly, already pushing in a little further.

“Anything,” she groans, adjusting her hips and dropping her legs open wider.

“I’ve thought about this so many times,” he says, drawing out a bit and pushing back in. “I’ve dreamed about kissing your pussy, about licking it, sucking your clit so gently until you say my name.”

“Ben…”

Pulls out a little, pushes in again.

“So many times I’ve wanted to open your legs and tease you with the end of my cock, rub it up and down your wet cunt. See you on your knees with it in your mouth, kissing me, taking me in, pulling me in…”

“Fuck, Ben,” she hisses, her skin cool with sweat while the blood below is on fire. He props himself up with his left hand and places the right over her right breast, gently squeezing, pinching her nipple very, _very_ delicately. Rey didn’t even fucking _like_ her nipples to be played with but this shit was _extraordinary_. 

He pulls out and drives himself back in and this time, she knows he is all the way. He pauses, hovering for a moment in some ecstatic suspense. His eyes are screwed shut, jaw clenched. She trails her nails behind his ear and down his neck, coming to rest against his shoulder, letting them dig into the warm flesh there. His dick twitches inside her and they both gasp.

Then he begins to pump steadily in and out of her, slowly at first. She loves the sound of his panting breath, loves that she is pulling that sound out of him, a guttural kind of grunting. It’s primal, the way they move together, hips moving in unison to meet again, again, again, faster and faster. His hand slides across her abdomen and his thumb starts to draw those perfect circles around her clitoris again. Everything intensifies, colours pop in the dark behind her closed eyelids.

“Your pussy’s like heaven, Rey,” he groans.

“Yeh,” she replies, feeling a trickle of sweat drip into the hair at her temple. “It’s all yours.”

“All mine? Am I the only one who can fuck you?”

“Yeh, no one else can fuck me, my pussy’s yours.”

“I make you feel so good, you don’t even want to fuck anyone else.”

“Your cock is so good, Ben, it feels so good.”

“You can have it as much as you like, as many times as you want, day or fucking night -”

“Yeh -”

“It’s yours -”

“Ben - I’m gonna cum -”

“Do it, girl. Cum for me. I want to feel you -”

She has, honest to god, never felt anything that matches up to this. Every orgasm she has ever had in her life could go toe to toe with this feeling and have their asses handed to them on a silver platter; it is the creme de la creme of sex, sheer ecstasy, every tiny cog inside her quaking like it is being pulled apart and fitted back together again but better than before, more exquisitely. She feels a crescendo of goldleaf wash over her and raise her up, swelling like a wave. Distantly, she hears his stuttering, choking cry of pleasure too and feels his movements against her jerk and still, deep, deep inside her.

He lowers himself down to rest half on her body, half on the bed, breathing hard. They lie there for a couple of minutes, trying to catch their breath. Then Rey blows out a long stream of air. His chest rumbles as he begins to laugh and she turns her head to look at him, all sweaty and flushed red under a strip of moonlight and she laughs too.

“Didn’t expect that to happen tonight,” she giggles.

“Nor me.”

“Don’t regret it though.”

“No. Definitely not,” he says. He continues to look at her and his gaze grows soft, the amusement melting off his face. He reaches up to place a hand on her cheek and kisses her mouth again. When he pulls away, there is a little crinkle in his brow. “Rey? Are you still on the pill?”

“Yeh,” she says, nodding quickly.

“Okay. You didn’t stop taking it?”

“No,” she says. “Because… well, you never know, do you?”

He nods, evidently satisfied and traces his fingers down her neck to rest on her bare shoulder. She closes her eyes, luxuriating in the feel of it, and exhales happily.

She _is_ on the pill, that much is true. However, that fact is lucky in itself because she _had_ stopped taking it when she and Justin had split up. She had only started to again the week after Tribe of Frog, the club night in Bristol she had attended with Ben. 

Because, well… just in case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspiration for last week's chapter title, [Dead Horse - Hayley Williams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIZkVaM-0K8)  
> [Wasabi Challenge](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Wasabi%20Challenge)  
> [Tribe of Frog](https://tribeoffrog.org/gallery/)  
> [Breakstep music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ3QN5dOu3Q&list=PLCEO-Smq-kJX2nYLueoN0YOzWJ6uOHy5C)  
> Ben's 'I like my coffee black just like my metal' mug is a nod to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0AX81gv5aM) song by Mindless Self Indulgence  
> [Erasmus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_Programme)


	3. Sudden Desire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Sudden Desire - Hayley Williams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yQGNef52FQ)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, it feels good to be back with these two in this universe.  
> It's been a good writing week for me as I finished a Christmas one shot (posted on Christmas Day!) that I've been revisiting for a year _and_ I finished this chapter.  
> I'm pretty convinced I'll be able to post the next chapter within a week or so as it's all planned out, I just need to write the thing.  
> Missed you guys!  
> I'm sorry it's been so long but that's art for you, isn't it? (Not to mention the state that this year has wrought on _everyone's_ mental health.)  
> I just really hope you enjoy. Comments, kudos and bookmarks make me smile every time, so if you feel so inclined, please go crazy.  
> Big love,  
> Anais xo

_ *** _

_ I wanted him to kiss me how _

_ With open mouth and open mouth _

_ We keep our distance now _

_ I wanna feel his hands go down _

_ I try not to think about _

_ What happened last night outside his house _

_ Too far to go back now _

_ Just wanna feel his hands go down _

July

When it comes to stocking shelves, Rey hates her life. She much prefers being on the tills where she can get away with doing next to nothing, just speaking to people and pricing up their items. ‘ _ Hiya’, ‘Nice weather out’  _ and _ ‘Do you need a bag?’  _ are the only lines she needs to remember and the rest of the time she spends pushing around different variety packets of chewing gum on the display unit, chin slumped in her palm.

Of course, it might be nice to have a more interesting summer job - which is what she’s calling this gig for the time being - but she hasn’t been getting a great deal of sleep recently and maybe the monotony is a blessing in disguise? She can keep her work inside this small building, forget about it when she leaves, and the opportunity to fuck up is always pretty minimal.

However, her least favourite part of the job is being put on stock check because she has to spend hours at a time crouching down to fill out the bottom shelves, reaching up higher than her physique deems comfortable to fill out the top shelves, and apologise every time some absent-minded customer bumps into her through no fault of her own.

It is for this reason that she initially rolls her eyes as a voice says close to her ear, “Excuse me, you got any Carlsberg please?” in an almost comedic West Country accent. She is about to turn and say, ‘Last aisle before the tills, my love,’ (because the booze literally  _ always  _ is) when she turns and meets Ben’s face, smiling at her mischievously.

Her eyes widen and she beams.

“What are you doing here?” she says in a hushed but excited tone.

“Came to get you,” he says simply, grinning.

Rey groans inwardly. They had been due to meet up later on but she hadn’t expected him to come and get her from work, and now they’re in a pickle because she has just agreed with her boss to work an extra hour in the back to tidy up stock following the busy summer afternoon of alcohol and barbecue sales.

“I’m doing overtime, I thought I was coming to you later?”

“You said you finished at three, I just thought I’d surprise you. It’s fine, I’ll kill some time.”

“Doing what?” she smirks. The housing estate outside the shop windows isn’t exactly bustling with diverting activities.

“Help an old lady with her shopping? Get in a fight with some chavs? Get a ninety nine from the paedo in the transit van?”

“Hey, that was never proved in a court of law,” Rey jests, because though what she’d said was true, everyone around here knows damn well to keep their children away from Mr Whippy.

“Then I’ll just hang out for a bit,” he says, matter of factly, seemingly quite unabashed by the idea.

“I’ll be an hour, Ben, you can’t…” she begins.

“Chill out. I’ve got my headphones. I’ll see you in a bit. Get us some booze, I’ll split it with you.”

She feels uncomfortable for a moment, because sometimes he says things like this and doesn’t follow through. Sure, she gets a staff discount for anything she buys, but these small amounts add up in a way that wouldn’t ever affect his financial stability, but always inevitably affects hers.

“Okay,” she says tentatively. “If you’re sure.”

He flashes her a look, a sharp piercing gaze that roams from her eyes down to her navel and back then he chews his lower lip and takes a step towards her, reaching out a hand to graze her hip.

“Hey!” she snaps, though she is smiling broadly. “There are cameras.”

“So?”

“ _ So _ I need this fucking job, now away with you.”

He pouts but steps back, head bowed.

“Make it a short hour,” he says.

She rolls her eyes and turns back to the basket of dried pasta bags she is stacking.

It is a very, very long hour.

At a few minutes until the end of her shift, she is loitering by the  _ Staff Only  _ door, beyond which are her belongings. 

Unkar, her boss, says suddenly in her ear, “Last three minutes of a shift and you’ve done all you can?”

Rey looks up to face him, unpleasantly surprised. “Sorry, sorry, it’s just - I’ve finished my jobs, it seemed pointless to start another one now.”

“Tell you what,” he says, slyly. “You can go now if you start half an hour earlier on Saturday.”

Rey frowns, insulted. She frames her features into a flirtatious smile which she hates herself for. “Mr Plutt, I’m two minutes from the end of my shift, you’re not going to make me put in an extra half hour unpaid just because we’re quiet, are you?”

He eyes her, seemingly undeterred by her fabricated charms.

“Jesus, go then. You’re no use to me here. Take out the rubbish on your way, okay?”

Rey doesn’t even bother to smile at him, simply turns and pushes through the swing door to the staff room where she sweeps up her shoulder bag and makes for the back door. She scoops up the layers of flat packed cardboard and bulging black bin bags deposited by the exit, struggling to keep hold of it all, and heaves them outside, down the narrow back steps before throwing them carelessly into the industrial wheelie bin.

Wiping her palms down on her jeans, she makes her way out of the gate and towards the residential street, steering clear of a group of teenagers playing football in the middle of the road. One wolf whistles as she passes and she rolls her eyes, flipping the bird over her shoulder and causing them all to snigger as she walks on. She doesn’t care though, because when she reaches the shop front, she spots Ben perched on a bench on the other side of the road. He is holding something in his hands that looks like a bundle of scrunched up paper and as she approaches, glancing both ways across the road before jogging towards him, hands in the pockets of her jeans, she realises that what he’s holding is a tray of takeaway chips wrapped up in the usual paper packaging. There is another parcel beside him on the bench and as he rises to greet her, he picks it up and hands it over.

“You absolute babe,” she grins, accepting the food gratefully. He shrugs one of his large shoulders nonchalantly and continues eating his chips with a little wooden spork.

“Good shift?” he asks.

“Same old,” she replies, practically tearing open the styrofoam takeout box and ramming no less than seven chips into her mouth.

“I got you salt and vinegar.”

“No other way,” she tries to say, chewing her considerable mouthful. It doesn’t faze him. Together, they stroll along the pavement, munching away as the sun beats down on their skin, not as hot as it had been at midday but still enough to cause them both to break a little sweat as they make their way up the hill towards Ben’s.

By the time they reach his place, they’ve both finished their grub and disposed of the packaging and are deep in conversation about the plot of a television series that had finished on a dramatic cliff hanger the night before. They continue to chatter all the way through the house, into the kitchen where Ben grabs them two beers from the fridge before moving out to the garden. Once they are both reclining in their usual spots, Rey in her old familiar hammock suspended from the apple tree and Ben on his back in the grass beside her, a comfortable silence settles over them. Rey sighs cheerfully, tension leaking out of her chest at the prospect of spending the next few days with Ben after a week of lengthy, mind-numbing shifts.

“What’re you thinking?” he asks and though her eyes are closed against the bright sun, she can tell he is watching her.

“Just how some things never change.”

“Well,” he remarks in amusement. “We don’t live here anymore for a start.”

Rey feels her stomach do a little somersault. She still hasn’t told him that she’d dropped out of uni and won’t be returning to the south west in September, that she  _ does _ in fact live here once again. Wishing to move on to a less weighty subject, she adds, “And we’re actually friends now, not just hiding it from other people like in school.”

“Is that what we are?” he asks, tone deceptively light. She wants to open her eyes and look at him but forces herself not to.

“I don’t know,” she responds, voice equally measured but with just a hint of flirtation. “Are we still a secret?”

“Not if you don’t want to be.”

She can’t help the smile from spreading across her face. “My, my. Maybe some thing’s really do change.”

“You still always get the hammock,” he snarks back, sharp as a whip.

“You gonna fight me for it?”

“Nah. I’d rather you make it up to me later.”

Now she flicks open one of her eyes and fixes him with a mischievous look. “No really, take the hammock, Ben.”

He takes and swig of his beer and shakes his head, a coy smile playing about his lips. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

She smirks and turns her face back to the sky, letting the heat roll over her gently perspiring skin. “Your mind games don’t work on me, Solo. I’m much older and wiser.”

For a time, there is an easy silence once again before Ben breaks it.

“Rey?”

“Hm?”

There is a slight hesitation before he carries on speaking, in a tone which is now devoid of any kind of playfulness. “I’ve been thinking a bit recently about… given - what with us, you know, doing what we’re doing -”

She turns her head once again and squints at him. “Sleeping together?”

He inclines his head and she can see a small frown growing on his face as he tears up several unfortunate blades of grass. “Yeh. When we used to… back in school… I’ve been thinking about how I  _ was… _ and I know that I wasn’t always - I mean, I don’t think that I was always particularly -  _ nice _ to you.”

It is Rey’s turn to frown, considering him carefully. He flicks his gaze up to meet hers and his whole body seems tense, as though waiting for some sort of blow.

“That was a long time ago,” she says delicately.

He sighs heavily and goes on. “I think I - I’ve been wondering if at times… Rey, did I ever, like, gaslight you in any way?”

She blinks at him. She casts her mind back, a painful exercise in many ways as those years, while incredibly formative in making her the person she is today, were also very emotionally fraught. She attempts to answer as truthfully as she can, because whatever has happened in their past, Ben is a very different person now and deserves to know the truth.

“You said a lot of stuff to antagonise me, yeh. I mean, I don’t know if you’d call it - if it was…” she sighs. “You were a really unhappy person then and -”

“I was self-involved,” he interrupts, looking away from her and sounding annoyed, though she knows it isn’t directed at her. “I was afraid, I was self-conscious. School was fucking shit but that’s no excuse. I’m - I’m really sorry if I treated you in any sort of - manipulative way. I was going through some gnarly stuff emotionally, as you know, and that isn’t me making excuses, but I acknowledge that I - I didn’t know myself very well back then. And they say that we take things out on the people we care about and - I think maybe that’s why I behaved in a certain way towards you. Which is shit, obviously, but that’s why I did it, I think, because I felt like you wouldn’t judge me for it, maybe? But I’m still - pretty ashamed of how I acted and some of the things I said.”

Rey is eerily reminded of the time he apologised for his behaviour towards her at the year eleven prom. It isn’t as gratifying this time - if anything, it feels bad to remember the things he used to say, the way he happily taunted her.

“I don’t think about you that way anymore,” she says in a small voice.

He pauses and meets her gaze once more, the look he gives her steady and full of meaning. “I’m not that person anymore. What I’m trying to say is, I’ll never treat you like that again. I’ll never treat you with disrespect because you - you are -” He stops, seeming lost for words. She thinks it’s high time she swooped in to save him.

“Thank you,” she says simply, offering him a small but sincere smile which after a moment, he returns, looking grateful.

August

Rey is thankful for the cool night air against her face as she grabs a momentary breath and looks out across the open field milling with bodies stumbling in and out of dirty white marquees. She takes a sip of her plastic cup of cider, which is a little flat now from being sloshed around while she was dancing, and the smell of earth and sweat and barbecue smoke fills her nostrils. To her, this is the quintessential scent of summer. Beside her, Ben wrinkles his nose.

“Smells like when my dad used to make me play football on Saturday mornings when I was a kid.”

She snorts, taking another sip of her lukewarm drink before casually pressing her lips to his bicep, which is the highest point of his body she can reach at her height without straining. He takes a drag on his cigarette and rests his chin on top of her scalp as he blows out smoke.

“I’m so fucking glad the sun’s gone down,” she says, watching the crowds of people before them, shrieking and laughing and singing and drinking. “I used to think I was good with the heat but this month is taking the piss.”

“You look nice with a tan though,” he says idly, chest rumbling against her shoulder. “I like it when your cheeks are all flushed.”

“When I’m hot and bothered, you mean?” she asked, raising an eyebrow and smirking. He plants a kiss on top of her head where his chin had been and hums wistfully.

“Oh yeh, I really like that.”

She giggles and pokes him in the ribs, spilling a little cider on his Dropkick Murphy’s shirt.

“Revenge!” she sniggers and he bends down to her eye level, blowing a stream of smoke out from the corner of his mouth before planting a kiss on her lips. She pretends to squirm but the taste intrigues her, though that could just be the effect he has on her. She can’t imagine enjoying kissing anyone else with smoker’s breath, but Ben is… a special case.

Always has been really.

“Do you want another?” he asks once he’s pulled away from her, indicating her drink. She hasn’t quite finished it yet, but the queues for the bar have been long all day, as they are with any music festival. Despite the fact that this is a local event and holds a capacity of no more than four hundred people or so, it is a staple in the calendar of most young people and music enthusiasts for several towns in the vicinity. 

She nods, beaming sleepily at him as a wave of tiredness comes over her after the long day of dancing and drinking, and thinks that this pint will be her last; at this stage, she’s much more interested in getting back to his house and indulging in a very pleasant, lethargic shag before falling into a deep sleep.

He’s been gone for five minutes before Rey hears someone calling her name. Turning around, she squints into the descending darkness and from her spot at the mouth of the tent, she sees a familiar face approaching her with a joyously drunk smile on their face.

“Finn!” she cries, throwing her arms up, the dregs of her cider shooting into the air and cascading over the pair of them. Her old school friend and Rose’s boyfriend doesn’t seem to notice, let alone care, and he throws his arms around her in a tight embrace.

“I didn’t know you were here!” he exclaims, a little slurred.

“I’m here with Ben!” she explains, grinning at him broadly, happy to see another friendly face.

“Who?”

“Ben!” she repeats. “You know, Ben! He’s, like, my best friend.”

“Who the hell are you talking about, Rey?” he says, raising an eyebrow and swaying on the spot a little. She reaches out a hand to steady him.

“The Ben we went to school with? Ben Solo, you  _ know _ him!”

Finn hesitates for a brief moment before the lightbulb goes on above his head. “Ben  _ Solo? _ You’re best friends with Ben  _ Solo _ ?”

“Yeh,” she snorts. “Where’ve you been? How did you not know that?”

“I thought Rose was, like, your best friend,” he says, hiccuping.

Rey’s brow creases a little at this, as she still hasn’t properly made it up with Rose after their argument a month and a half ago. They have exchanged texts once or twice, but with one thing and another - Rose being abroad and Rey spending most of her time with Ben - they haven’t exactly sorted their quarrel out yet.

“Yeh, she is but… you know,” Rey says shrugging. She purses her lips and on a whim asks, “How is she? I haven’t heard from her in a while.”

To her surprise, Finn grimaces. “Oh, you know, she’s really  _ busy _ .” He shuffles his feet and Rey reaches out once again to steady him, because he is  _ really _ drunk. “She’s so talented, you know. She’s going places. Like,  _ literally. _ ”

“Yeh, she was always bound to,” Rey agrees, nodding her head to humour him.

“She doesn’t have a lot of time for me, you know,” Finn goes on and it is at this point that she sees his eyes are unfocussed, a little crossed. “I mean, it makes sense, but,  _ you know _ !” He throws his arms into the air in a ‘ _ what’re you gonna do? _ ’ gesture. 

Rey leans in to speak into his ear. “Who are you here with?”

“ _ What _ ?”

“Who did you come here with?” she repeats.

“Oh, you know,” Finn mumbles, trailing off distractedly. Rey frowns at his vacant expression.

“I think you should go home, babe.”

At that point, Poe Dameron appears behind Finn, slapping a hand down on his shoulder and causing the unsteady man’s knees to buckle worryingly.

“There you are!” Poe cries, curling an arm around Finn’s shoulders. “I lost you for a minute -  _ Rey _ ?”

“Hey, Poe,” she grins a little awkwardly. She hasn’t seen him properly since sixth form and he has filled out a lot in the last year.

He’s nothing on Ben, obviously, but still she remembers a time when their friends were encouraging them to date.

“It’s so good to see you!” he exclaims, almost as drunk as Finn. He whips his arms from his friend’s back and instead wraps them around Rey, squeezing her so tightly that he pulls her off her feet. She laughs raucously, whatever tension that had previously existed dissipating instantly with his playful nature. Lovely Poe, he had always been so easy to get on with, and she chastises herself for forgetting that.

“How have you been?” he asks once he’s set her down.

“Ah, you know,” she shrugs, grinning dreamily, happy to be surrounded by friends. “Having a pretty good summer so far. What about you?”

“Same, baby, same,” he hums, snapping his fingers together. “Me and Finny are having the best of times, aren’t we? What larks, hey? What larks!”

She bursts out laughing at the pair of them. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Hey,” says a voice at her back and she turns to see Ben holding two plastic pint cups filled to the brim with amber liquid. With only a glance, she can tell he is eyeing up the new scenario apprehensively, though no one but her would be able to tell. To the rest of the world, he presents an expression of casual disinterest. She smiles up at him, taking the drink he hands her before snaking an arm around his waist.

“Guys, you remember Ben,” she says, leaning her head against his chest.

It’s a picture.

It’s a masterpiece, actually.

Finn’s mouth is hanging open dumbly as he stares up at all six foot two of Ben, while Poe looks from Ben to Rey to Ben to Rey with narrowed eyes.

“You’re not - you don’t mean -” Poe stutters drunkenly. Rey arches an eyebrow up at him. “Ben  _ Solo _ ? From school?”

“Last time I checked,” Ben replies, and while polite, his tone isn’t exactly friendly either. Rey wonders if he is remembering their year eleven prom and whom she had taken as a date for the evening.

“Are you two -” Finn starts to say but Poe smacks a hand to his chest, causing him to stumble slightly.

“Be cool, man,” he mutters, turning back to face the couple with what looks like a forced smile on his face. “Hey, it’s really great seeing you two. How long are you around?”

“Um…” Rey stammers, suddenly frazzled.

“September,” Ben supplies, cool as a cucumber.

“We should hang out,” Poe says and though his voice is enthusiastic, Rey has a feeling that neither party will ever endeavour to make  _ that _ happen. 

“I think Finn might need to hit the hay soon, Poe,” Rey says, eyeing the man in question with concern. “Rose would never forgive me if he passed out in the middle of a field on my watch.”

The strangest tension descends on the group at that point, Poe’s usually easy smile going taut and Finn actually turning away from them. Rey’s brow furrows in confusion.

“You know, maybe it is time we got you home, huh, buddy?” Poe muses, patting Finn on the back. “Look, Rey - Ben - it was good to see you both.” He shoots them a broad, charming grin, just like the one he used to flash at teachers when trying to placate them at school, before draping an arm around Finn’s neck and striding away into the clammer of bodies all around.

Rey whistles. “Well… that was odd.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Ben agrees, frowning after them.

It is at this moment that she yawns, all attempts at stifling her obvious lethargy going unsuccessfully. He squeezes her hip.

“Tired?” he asks softly.

“Knackered,” she admits.

“Wanna get a taxi before the crowds?”

“But you just got us drinks,” she pouts, annoyed at herself for being a party pooper. He raises the hand holding his cider and throws it unceremoniously over his shoulder, the whole contents splashing to the ground in a great cascade and nearly drenching a passing trio of inebriated women who all cry out in unison, “Watch it, you twat!”

Rey’s eyes go wide with equal parts mortification and mirth, and she hides her face partially in his chest.

“Did I?” he asks dryly, in response to her initial comment.

On the way home, she falls asleep in the crook of Ben’s shoulder and it is only when they arrive at his house that she stirs enough to slip out of the taxi and shuffle towards the front door, shivering slightly from the cool night air. They both tiptoe up to Ben’s room and Rey forgoes pyjamas, merely pushing off her denim shorts and removing her vest and bra before climbing into his bed where he joins her moments later, curling up to spoon her back.

Sleepily, she mumbles, “Did you want to fuck?”

He smirks against her hair. “No.”

“Why?” she asks sleepily, not entirely disappointed.

“Because I’m happy just like this,” he mumbles, shuffling behind her. “And we can fuck any time we want.”

She hums happily. “Tomorrow?”

“All day long if you want, kid,” he replies.

“Yeh,” she says. “That’d be nice.”

The next morning they wake at around ten. Rey is leaning on a mountain of pillows propped up against the headboard and Ben is slumped further down beside her, tapping out a message about household bills to Mitaka on his phone. Rey replays the conversation she’d been having with Finn last night before Poe had turned up, and muses over what it might mean.

“You alright?” Ben asks, putting his phone down. She nods absently in response, still thinking. “Hungover?”

“Not really, just feeling a bit… pensive.”

“What about?”

She turns her head towards him and sighs, wondering if he’ll appreciate her anxiety without understanding the whole picture. She decides to try to explain. “Finn was saying some stuff last night when we first bumped into each other and I don’t know, I guess… I guess I might have been underestimating how many things are kind of changing at the moment.” She shakes her head sadly, a crease forming between her eyebrows. “I think I just feel really out of touch with my friends and maybe I’m just missing them but - I don’t know. People just seem to be moving on all around me.”

“Your friends will always be your friends, Rey,” Ben says comfortingly, propped up on his elbow. “And you’re moving on too, don’t forget. Who are you living with next year?”

She clears her throat uncomfortably, caught off guard by his question. “Just, um… I haven’t decided yet.”

She can feel him staring at her, abashed, and she chooses not to meet his eyes. In a tone of concern, he tells her, “You need to get that sorted, kid, we’re in August now. You’ll be in trouble if you’ve got nowhere to stay when term starts.”

She doesn’t have the energy to think up an excuse right now; she feels a little depressed, somewhat hopeless. “I suppose I just feel a bit left behind,” she murmurs, examining her fingers twisting in her lap.

There is a few moments pause where something seems to hang in the air between them.

“Do you need my help with anything?” Ben asks in a careful voice. The look he gives her is so genuine, so earnest that she feels like crying. She smiles meaningfully at him and leans across the space between them to kiss his forehead.

“No, I’ve got it,” she replies in a shaky breath.

To avoid continuing the conversation, she kisses him on the mouth this time, gently, lazily, sweetly. He raises a hand up to her chin and cups his palm around her jawline, meeting her lips with interest.

As the kiss intensifies, Ben rolls on top of her, crushing her into the pillows with his warmth. His fingers trail down her flank, still bare from the night before, and slide to the line of her underwear. Continuing their deep kiss, his runs the pad of his thumb lightly over her covered sex, eliciting a low moan from Rey’s throat. 

Massaging her gently for several moments in which her core oozes with liquid fire, he then proceeds to slip his hand beneath the leg of her knickers and lightly ruffles her curls with the tips of his fingers. She smiles into his mouth and hums delightedly, enjoying the sensation. His index finger slides easily between her folds and her clitoris thrums with the sweet ache of needing him, needing  _ more _ .

When his middle finger pushes into her, she gasps, heart fluttering, and it is very hard now to concentrate on kissing Ben. He pulls his mouth away from hers and she opens her eyes to find him watching her with something like wonder in his expression, the way his lips are ever so slightly parted as he gazes back at her. She lifts up her arms to curl her fingers into the dark hair at his scalp and then lets her eyelids shudder closed again with a sigh as he slides in another finger. With his free hand, he delicately brushes the hair from her face, smoothing it away from her eyes.

She cums in a chorus of moans and pants, heart hammering and thighs clenching around his hand, the feeling more like an inferno than a crashing wave. Her chest is pounding as she gasps for air, trying to gather her composure as beads of light perspiration break out at her temples.

Opening her eyes, she sees Ben still watching her, his fingers still moving inside her at a much reduced pace until finally they still. He leans down and kisses her parted lips for a long, long time.

In the final week of August, Rey tells Ben she won’t be returning to Bath. 

October

“Oh my god, do that again - no, not that - oh _ yes,  _ that!”

Ben’s hot breath rushes like a desert wind across her clavicle as he grins, teeth firmly latched on to the soft flesh of her shoulder. “Yeh?”

“Oh god, yeh, oh  _ fuck -” _

He sinks his teeth in deeper and her cunt pulses around his dick as it bounces in and out of her, hitting her sweet spot relentlessly. 

“Touch yourself,” he grunts, palming at her breast with the hand that isn’t pressed into the bed to hold himself up as he moves. “Touch yourself for me.”

She does, lifting her fingers to the swollen nub just above the place where their bodies are converging and circles, the merest pressure enough to make her see stars.

“Ben, I’m gonna -” she whines, the ability to speak leaving her as the first wave of orgasm rolls through her lower body.

“Oh god, me too,” he pants, grunting and pressing forward with more fervour than ever. His hand cupping her breast contracts and he bites down on the skin of her shoulder again -

And it’s all over as a blinding, flash flood courses through her system, thighs quaking as his body stills deep inside of her, shuddering and sweating together.

Gasping for air, they keel over onto their sides on the mattress, Ben’s massive frame spooning her much smaller one. Rey’s heartbeat is racing painfully in her chest and it’s all she can do to bring a hand up to her face to wipe her brow.

After a few minutes, he presses his warm, wet lips gently to the place where he had bitten her, languorously attentive, as though he is trying to kiss it better. Something inside her sings and a half-smile curls the corner of her mouth.

When he shuffles behind her as if he is about to pull out, she seizes him, fingers clutching at his hip bone. 

“Stay,” she whispers breathlessly.

“What?” he murmurs.

“Stay, stay,” she repeats, clenching around his penis possessively.

“Rey,” he says unsurely. “I don’t know if I can keep -”

“No, not like that…” she explains, stroking his rump even at the awkward angle it takes to reach behind herself. “Just don’t pull out, be with me. Just stay inside a bit longer.”

There is a pause and then he settles down with his chest against her back again, breath evening out in earnest now. After a minute or two, he has gone completely soft but still they lie there together, arms clutching, chests rising and falling in tandem, connected.

December

Rey hasn’t been this excited for Christmas since -

Well. Ever. 

It is for this reason she doesn’t mind the hectic day she’s had at work, with hoards of disgruntled customers and Unkar constantly on her back to be in three places at once (two of her colleagues had called in with the flu that morning, though Rey knew damn well they’d been at the local pub until the small hours and were most likely hungover.) Despite the festive playlist on repeat and the halfhearted swathes of tinsel sellotaped to the shelves, her workplace is distinctly lacking in Christmas cheer. However, Rey is humming along happily to  _ Do They Know It’s Christmas Time  _ for the umpteenth time today and musing about seeing Ben in just a short half hour. 

Their relationship had shifted somewhat after their very own Long Hot Summer descended into an autumn that seemed made up of long sprawls of restless time waiting for the moment they would see each other again. Now that Ben is living three hours away from her, they speak to each other on the phone a lot more than ever they have done and each day they exchange texts, just to keep the contact rolling. It is strange to her how they never seem to run out of things to say to one other, even when apart - though on the occasions when he has come home to visit, their interactions are, of course, exponentially more satisfying.

They had spoken on the phone last night as Rey was lying in bed trying to keep warm (her mum had neglected to pay the gas bill again) and he had agreed to pick her up outside the shop after her shift today. This morning, she had sent him a text:

_ Keep me posted on your moves, safe travels, can’t wait for you to save me from this festive hell _

She had checked her phone on her fifteen minute break and was a little put out to see that he hadn’t responded but had put it to the back of her mind.

She is spending Christmas night with Ben and Leia and she can’t wait. Of course, there is still a week to go until then but she will have Ben all to herself during that time and then into January too before he has to go back to uni; three weeks might not seem like a great deal of time to some, but it is the longest stretch of time that they will spend together again since he left town in September. 

At the moment her shift ends, she is practically shivering with anticipation. She all but runs into the back room, calling a hasty goodbye to her grouch of an employer who doesn’t seem to deem her worthy of a response, and flies down the back stairs, throwing up her hood against the light drizzle outside. It is dark, the orange streetlights refracting sparkles off the surface of the wet ground. She rips her phone out of her pocket to check if Ben has been in contact but still nothing. Perhaps his phone had died on the journey home? She strides around the corner of the building and emerges at the shop front, peering out into the wet night for a sign of him.

She can’t see him anywhere.

Hm.

This is strange, out of character for Ben who usually always meets her on time, but perhaps he is held up at home or got caught in the downpour and had to run back for an umbrella. His train got in at a little after 1pm and so he must have been home for hours by now. She checks her phone again, wiping away a few spattering raindrops from the screen, and checks the time.

17:01

She chastises herself. He’s hardly late - she’s only just got off work. She decides to send him a text anyway:

_ Just got out, you close? _

before sliding her phone into the pocket of her raincoat, fist clutched around it in case it vibrates with his response.

She waits.

And she waits.

After twenty minutes of steadily getting more and more drenched, she tries to call him and to her consternation, it goes directly to voicemail. 

Worrying her bottom lip, she slides her phone uneasily back into her pocket and kicks the puddles at her feet. Two minutes later, she tries him again with the same results and then five minutes after that the same thing happens.

When her Lock Screen reads:

17:33

she reasons with her aggrieved mind that she can’t stay out here in the cold and damp any longer or she’ll be ill for a good chunk of Ben’s stay and that would undoubtedly ruin everything. She struggles between two very definitive courses of action: go directly to Ben’s house and meet him there, maybe throw her drenched raincoat at him in reprimand for leaving her out here without telling her ahead of time, or go back to her own flat where the air will be icy and her mum will spend the whole evening coughing loudly in her bedroom.

It seems like an obvious choice, when she puts it that way, but something inside her gives her pause. She can’t just show up unannounced at Ben’s house. What if he isn’t even there and Leia answers the door, completely abashed by the sodden twenty year old on her doorstep? The thought of it mortifies her beyond anything and in an instant, her decision crystallises.

It isn’t far to walk back to her block of flats but with the rain literally soaking through her trainers and cheap ‘waterproof’ mack, time is of the essence now to get somewhere dry, if not warm. She drips all the way up to the eighth floor, feeling guilty for leaving a slipping hazard in her wake. Once inside her front door, she is surprised to see her mum rifling through the kitchen cupboards as though she’s lost something.

“You used the last of the tea bags, love?” she barks at Rey, apparently by way of greeting.

“I don’t drink tea,” she replies flatly.

Her mum smacks the counter agitatedly under her palm. “Can’t get fucking warm in here, heating’s fucking fucked until - well, anyway.” She trails off, eyes darting around the room. 

“Did you ring them today?” Rey asks. 

“Who?”

It is an effort not to roll her eyes. “The gas company.”

“No, no, not yet and they’ll be shut now, won’t they?” her mother snaps bad-temperedly. “Useless fucking tossers.”

Rey feels like saying, ‘look who’s talking, Angie’ but doesn’t because she doesn’t have the energy to bicker right now and after all, they’re both in the same boat. The same  _ freezing _ boat.

“I’ll see if anyone’s answering the phones,” she says in a resigned sort of voice. “You’d be warmer if you put more clothes on.”

Her mum looks down at herself, as if realising for the first time that she is wearing nothing but her underwear, a worn old camisole and a threadbare dressing gown. A smirk cracks her dry lips, skin stretching a little taut across her thin, slightly greasy cheekbones and she looks back at her daughter, sniggering.

“That’s not a bad idea, darling. Silly cow, ain’t I?”

Rey had stopped responding to these moments of self deprecating humour a long time ago because the only purpose they ever serve is to distract from the fact that her mum never ceases to make fuck ups like these. She would jokingly call her behaviour into question as if it was something she simply couldn’t help.  _ What am I like, eh? I’d lose my head if it weren’t screwed on!  _ But the truth was, she  _ could _ help it and yet she never changed.

Rey strips off her coat and shoes, leaving them by the front door and makes for her bedroom, somewhat uncomfortable due to her damp clothes. Before she shuts the door behind herself, Angie calls after her, “Weren’t you supposed to be out tonight?”

Rey freezes, heart skipping dully for a moment.

“No,” she shrugs and closes the door before her mum can add anything else.

Several hours later, she is tucked up in bed, clothed in two layers of pyjamas and three different pairs of socks, pouring numbly over an art blog on her laptop. The call handler she had spoken to earlier assured her that the heating would be back on first thing tomorrow, once he had ensured that their payment had gone through. So, at least she isn’t about to freeze to death in her own home - provided she makes it through the night, that is.

The room is dark; when her phone begins to buzz violently on the bedside table, the blue light it emits sends a beam up towards the ceiling. Looking at the screen dazzles her a bit and she squints to see who the caller is, though she has a good feeling she already knows.

“Are you okay?” she says in a rush on answering the call.

“Rey, I’m so sorry, I’m a fucking idiot.” Ben’s voice is wretched with guilt.

“Are you okay?” she repeats.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m just a  _ twat _ ,” he curses himself. “You’re gonna hate me.”

_ God, if only you knew,  _ she thinks, heart clenching.

“What happened? Are you at home?” she asks quietly, bracing a little.

“Nearly. I’m on a train now.”

“You missed the one this afternoon?” She frames it like a question but it is, of course, a fact; her real question is  _ why _ .

“Yeh, I - fucking hell, what a day - I went out last night with some people and it was only supposed to be a chilled one to kind of say goodbye before Christmas but…” He blows out a whistle. “Things got messy and we ended up in a club and it felt like a good idea at the time but I woke up at like midday and I couldn’t find my fucking phone so I had to fucking go back to every place we’d been last night and check if they had it. Finally found it, it’s got a giant crack in the screen but that’s the worst, it’s my own fault. Any way I jumped on a train like an hour ago and it’s been charging and then I got all of your calls and I’m really sorry, Rey, I’m a complete fuck up.”

In the wake of this monologue, he takes a deep breath, like he is waiting for her reply.

And she  _ knows _ that these things happen. And she  _ knows _ that it isn’t personal. And she  _ knows _ that her feelings of disappointment and the miserable evening she’s had is overriding her rationality and that she should just tell him it’s fine, no big deal, she’ll see him soon.

But her mouth feels stuck.

“Rey?” His voice is tentative, anxious.

“You’re not a fuck up,” she says, forcing the words out, if for nothing else than to save the situation from becoming emotionally fraught.

“But I did fuck up.”

“Hm,” she acquiesces quietly. “It’s just what it is.” She bites her lip and gathers her strength. “I know you didn’t mean to.”

“I can come over? As soon as I’m back, should be like, an hour and a half maybe?”

She glances at the time stamp in the corner of her laptop screen: 8:47pm. She frowns because she wants so desperately to see him, knows that once he is in front of her everything will feel fine again, but right now she finds she doesn’t have the energy.

“It’s okay, it’ll be late by then and my place is fucking freezing anyway.”

“I can come get you? I’ll borrow Leia’s car.”

“No, Ben, honestly, I’ve got to work a split tomorrow so I need to sleep.”

“What time do you finish?” He sounds a little desperate, throwing suggestions out into the void between them in an attempt to fix things.

“Eight.”

“I’ll be there, I promise. I’ll pick you up and we can get take out, my treat, and we’ll watch a film, whatever you want. Even if it’s like a fucking cheesy christmas flick or a rom com or  _ anything _ , anything you want.”

She smiles a little into the phone. “I don’t watch rom coms, Ben.”

He sounds relieved at the hint of amusement in her tone and presses on, grasping to the sudden levity in their discussion. “Then absolutely no rom coms, but still your choice, I won’t even gripe about it if it sucks. We can just… we can do whatever you want, Rey. I’ll make it up to you.”

She swallows thickly. She  _ misses _ him. She realises with acute discomfort in this moment just  _ how much _ she has been burying her feelings over the last few months, how awful and lonely she has been without him close by and it hurts because in a few short weeks, he’ll be gone again.

“Sounds nice,” she murmurs, trying not to let her sudden bout of depression leak into her tone. “Look, I’m really tired, I’m gonna go to sleep, I think. Long day.”

There is a brief pause before he says in a quiet voice, “Okay. Do you feel alright?”

She wishes he’d stop prodding her, because it just makes it harder to control her composure.

“Not bad, just cold and tired. Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he says hesitantly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Get home safe,” she says and hangs up, unable to keep a lid on the overwhelming sadness that has filled her up in the last few minutes. She closes her eyes and flings her phone on to the bed at her feet, burying her face in her hands. She rubs her cheeks and eyes and rakes her nails against her scalp, stealing herself not to cry.

She reaches for her phone again and closes her laptop before shuffling down beneath the duvet, pressing her feet together to generate some warmth. Resting her head on her arm, she scrolls through her phone book and sends a message to Rose. Ten minutes later, the screen lights up and, feeling so grateful she thinks she might not be able to hold the tears back any longer, she picks up.

“Hey Rosie.” Her voice is wobbly and pathetic.

“Hey Rey-Rey,” her estranged best friend answers. “What’s going on? Has something happened?”

She swallows thickly, an involuntary sniffle escaping her. Then she tells Rose everything.

*

Rey has spent the entire day in her pyjamas.

It’s been a relatively harmonious Christmas Day with Angie - pleasant even, Rey hesitates to admit. She had treated herself to a lie in until around 10am and shortly after had made herself some coffee and toast. Angie had joined her half an hour later and helped herself to the steaming pot, adding a dash of whiskey to her cup to kickstart the day. They had exchanged presents on the threadbare sofa; her gift for her mum is a fleecy new dressing gown and slippers, and to Rey’s surprise, her mum has given her a sketchpad and a selection of charcoals. Rey hasn’t drawn anything much since she moved back home, and so it is nice, even a little moving, for her mum to give her something that shows she occasionally pays attention.

Christmas dinner had been turkey dinosaurs with mashed potato and broccoli in front of the telly. Rey had particularly enjoyed watching the Queen’s Speech purely because of Angie’s unending stream of curses and insults at the old woman.

“Fucking rich bitch, of course you’ve had a good year in your golden fucking palace while the rest of us live on our fucking knees! Never reach your hand in your fucking pocket to help out the little people, do you, you old cow?”

They had continued watching as  _ The Grinch _ came on and towards the end, Angie had fallen asleep.

Rey is texting Ben, carrying on the conversation they’ve been having all day.

_ Jim Carey is the best grinch, fight me _

_ I’m not stupid enough to fight you _

_ Though Leia might, she hates that movie, says it’s scary _

_ Scary how? I had mad respect for your mum until now _

_ I’ll let her explain herself later _

_ What time are you coming? _

_ Whenever you want _

_ Mum’s fallen asleep _

_ Now? _

_ What now, now? _

_ Yeh, we’ve eaten, you’re welcome whenever _

_ Mum says so too _

_ Sweet _

_ Just need to get dressed _

_ I’d come get you in the car but I’ve had a few _

_ It’s cool, I’ll take my bike _

_ I’ll walk out to meet you _

She smiles at his offer and is about to get up when she hears her mum’s voice.

“Is it that kid again?” she asks in a sleep-rough voice.

“Ben? Yeh.”

“You don’t hang out with any of your other friends anymore. Don’t think I don’t notice.”

Rey frowns, because Angie does a pretty good job of making her think that way.

“They’re all away, aren’t they?”

“Even Rose?”

“She’s having family time. I’m seeing her next week I think.”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

She snaps her head towards her mother.

“No, why?”

Angie rolls her eyes knowingly.

“Of course you are. I’m not an idiot.” There is an uncomfortable pause. Rey’s mother has never so much as shown an interest in who Rey is romantically or sexually involved with, let alone tried to have a conversation with her about it. Then something even stranger happens: she sighs and lifts a hand to Rey’s cheek. “Sweetheart, you know I love you, right?” She cannot help her eyes from widening a little in response, frozen beneath her mother’s unfamiliar touch. “You’re better than any of them. You don’t need to depend on anyone, you’re too good for that. Relying on a man is a fool’s game, don’t let the Disney channel tell you anything different. You have two feet and they’re meant for standing on - you don’t need anyone else carrying you through life. Don’t take your independence for granted because men  _ love _ to take it away.”

Rey’s ears are ringing. She is speechless, has no idea how to respond.

Lamely, she says, “He’s just a friend, mum.”

“Well, as long as it stays that way.”

She frowns. “You don’t even know him.”

“He’s the same guy left you hanging out to dry in school, isn’t he?”

Rey stands, having heard enough. “It wasn’t like that. I’m going out anyway.”

“Rey -”

“Don’t worry about it, mum. I know how to take care of myself.”

January

It’s a bright, frosty morning and the fields on either side of the dual carriageway look gorgeous in a Brontë sisters kind of way. A low mist is creeping back over the horizon as the sun continues its trajectory into the blue up, skeletal trees rising like spindly fingers on the hills.

In the back seat, Rey feels Ben’s hand cover hers. She attempts to smile but continues to look out of the window.

At the train station, Leia gets out of the car to embrace her son, nearly twice her height now. She pats his cheek and stares up into his face and Rey is reminded of her own mother cradling her cheek and telling her never to depend on anyone but herself.

Ben has a large rucksack slung over one shoulder and a sports bag on his other. He keeps dipping his hand into his back pocket where his ticket is, nervously pulling it out and replacing it again. Rey wants to touch his arm to reassure him but stops herself.

They are inside the main building, Leia back in the car waiting for Rey.

He looks up at the digital timetable displaying bright orange times and platform numbers, then grimaces. “Shit, just in the nick of time.”

Rey glances up at the board too and sees his train near the top:

10:39  Bristol Temple Meads, calling at…

It is currently 10:30am.

“I wanted a cigarette ideally but that’d be pushing it,” he mutters, not particularly committed to what he’s saying. Something feels different, taut. It has been this way in the last couple of days, a sadness stretching between them, a kind of morose tension that they have both been attempting to overlook. Where before there was idle chatter, joking, kisses, there are now lengthy silences filled with too much that has gone unsaid.

Ben turns to look at her and raises his hands to her shoulders, rubbing his palms up and down her triceps.

“What are you doing for the rest of the day?”

Rey shrugs. “Don’t know.”

He gives her a half-hearted smile which doesn’t quite reach his eyes before casting his gaze down at the floor. He tugs her closer to him and wraps his arms around her body. She lets him, luxuriating his warmth, his tight, strong embrace. Tears spring to her eyes and she curses them.

“What’s up, kid?” he whispers in her ear and the  _ endearment  _ he always gives her, it’s too much to bear; she can’t talk or she’ll break. 

She snuffles into the front of his parka and he grips her more tightly.

“What can I do?” He murmurs, nose and lips pressed against her hair.

She wants to tell him. She  _ should _ tell him. It could change things, it could fix things -

It could destroy things.

She shakes her head, sniffing and reaching up to wipe her nose on her sleeve so she doesn’t get snot on his clothes. Pulling away, she steels herself with a breath and looks up at him with sore eyes. He meets her gaze and looks  _ pained.  _ She gives him her best impression of a sincere smile.

His fingers reach up to her cheek and she can’t help but lean into the touch, savouring it.

“It’s gonna be alright,” he says. 

He wants to mean it, she can tell.

She nods silently, still trying to give him the same small smile. A quiet settles between them. Bustling commuters pass by, chatter and footsteps echoing in the wide atrium, overhead announcements chiming and reminding customers to watch their bags.

Ben looks up at the board again and Rey follows his gaze.

10:35.

“I have to go,” he says.

She nods. He pulls her in for another hug. She can feel his heart beating against her cheek, even through his thick winter coat.

When he releases her, he is eyeing her again, and she knows that a thousand questions are swimming in his head.

“Go,” she croaks, pressing a hand against his chest. He doesn’t move. “Really, go. You’ll miss your train again.” He takes a step back, still watching her. She bobs her head towards the ticket barriers insistently, still with that half-encouraging smile. For a moment, he hesitates and she thinks he raises his hand again, just slightly.

_ Tell him. _

_ Just say it. _

She takes a step back and he quirks his mouth at her. Then he shrugs his rucksack higher ,up his shoulder and turns away.

Rey does not watch him go. It is too painful.

On the car ride home, Leia doesn’t say much, which she is grateful for. The twenty minute drive back to town feels like a lifetime, memories and emotions rising to the surface of Rey’s salt-water-logged brain like life rafts. She pushes them down, intent on drowning them.

When the car pulls up to the corner of her estate, Rey thanks Ben’s mother for the lift home. Reaching for the door handle, she stops short when Leia speaks.

“Rey, honey? You know you’re always welcome in my home.”

Rey’s face twists uncontrollably. She corrals her strength for the hundredth time today and replies, “Thanks, Leia. I’ll see you soon.”

That evening, her phone buzzes twice on her bedside table.

21:46

_ Back in Bristol, safe and sound. Mitaka asked after you. _

_ Cold in this bed. _

She locks her phone screen and doesn’t respond.


	4. Watch Me While I Bloom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watch Me While I Bloom - Hayley Williams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, these two are incapable of letting me sleep so *surprise*! Here is a very quick and unexpected update.  
> I considered waiting for a week after I posted the last chapter but if this story is bringing you happiness, reader, then who am I to prevent you from feeling it?  
> There's only one more chapter to go according to my plans, but heads up, the next one may in fact be a bit of an actual behemoth. If it gets too a point where I think it's too long to match up with the pacing I've been following so far, there *may* be two more chapters to come after this. Hopefully, we'll all find out soon enough.  
> I've fallen into the habit of regularly checking up on the number of comments, kudos and bookmarks I've been receiving lately for this story and as well as my Christmas oneshot (go check it out if you fancy!) and it truly does encourage me to keep working hard on fleshing out the narratives of our two beloved, challenged, grumpy, silly, soft children... So if you'd be kind enough to let me know how you're finding this work, please drop me a message or <3  
> And finally...  
> Okay so I know the last chapter was kind of rough going by the end there...

_You wanna look inside of me?_

_And just watch me bloom_

_You only got one side of me_

_Here's something new, ah_

_I'm alive in spite of me_

_And I'm on the move_

_So come and look inside of me_

_Watch me while I bloom_

November

Rey is looking up at a very big clock.

All around her, people are moving, dragging suitcases and lugging holdalls, hundreds of feet clacking and squeaking against polished tile. The space is an echo chamber of chatter and the whir of coffee grinders from little pop up kiosks and overhead announcements detailing a stream of times and place names.

She feels an eerie sense of déjà vu from a time nearly a year ago, standing in a similar looking train station and watching the time tick by, and she shakes it off before it can rattle her composure.

She has been to this particular station only once before, in the spring when she had visited the city to scout out the lay of the land. Since June, when she moved out of the high rise with Angie, she has called Sheffield her official new home.

It had been a stressful and hasty transition.

After Christmas, desperate to start afresh, she had started applying for courses. She was isolated, depressed and had no clue what she wanted to do with her future, but one fact was clear in her mind: she had to get out of this town. Everything reminded her of _him_.

As she already had her grades from sixth form, she was given an unconditional offer from her preferred option, Sheffield Hallam, to study Illustration - a subject she told herself had good potential to be a lot less wanky than her Fine Arts course at Bath Spa had been. She was due to leave home in September - that is, until the fight with her mum happened.

Since the little pep-talk Angie had given her daughter on Christmas day about fending for herself and never relying on anyone, Rey’s mum had for some reason gotten it into her head to bombard her at least once a week with the same lecture. It exasperated Rey that her mother didn’t seem to see the irony in this exercise, given that she had been looking after herself since she was old enough to walk. After nearly six months of this relentless ‘life advice’ all adhering to the same infuriatingly repetitive point, her patience had been stretched thinner than she could ever remember it being in living memory.

On the night in question, she had been out for a drink with a colleague from the shop, just a few pints to take the edge off her morose mood, and on returning home that evening she had opened the front door to find her mum spread-eagled on the sofa, bleary eyed and half naked. Caught off guard, she had raised her hands in front of her face to block out the sight of Angie’s partial nudity and cried, “Jesus, mum!”

Angie had groaned and attempted to sit up but a violent coughing fit had knocked her back into the cushions before she could make any real headway. Once she had recovered, she said in a tone that Rey had gotten woefully used to of late, “Come here, love. Come and talk to your mum.”

“I’m tired,” she replied, waving a hand and quickly making for her bedroom door.

“Wait, wait! I need to talk to you, it’s -” Another round of hacking and spluttering commenced then before she managed to complete her sentence. “It’s _important_.” 

Rey had had it _up to here_ with this bullshit. She whipped around to face her mum and snapped.

“Is it about being able to look after myself in a world where everyone just wants to take advantage of - _Jesus Christ,_ Mum, can you put your fucking tits away? You don’t need to keep giving me the same lecture, alright? I _know_ how to survive on my own. I’ve been doing it for a really long time.”

Angie had only managed to conceal one of her breasts inside the rumpled neckline of her night dress before she continued speaking. “No, darling. You’ve had _me_ , you’ve always had me to support you and -”

Rey’s blood rose violently. She thought about all the years of cold microwave meals and second hand clothes and gyro cheques and empty bottles and filth and shivering in her bed as a child because her mother hadn’t cared enough to pay the heating bill, thought about the seering depression that had racked her for so many months now, how she had gotten through it _alone_ , _again_ and all the white hot rage she had meticulously kept in check towards her only known parent for her whole life came crashing up like a cyclone.

“ _You_ support _me?”_ she shrieked derisively. “You make my fucking arse laugh, Angie! I’ve been in work since I was thirteen years old, I’ve been cooking my own meals and paying your bills and looking out for myself for as long as I can fucking remember!”

And then it was Angie’s turn to become incensed, and whether it was because her daughter had never spoken to her like this before or because she felt attacked or because some part of her knew that what Rey was saying was true, she didn’t know.

“Watch your lip, girl, I’m your fucking mother. Don’t be so ungrateful. I put a roof over your head, I brought you up on my own, scraping to survive in this shit hole of a place -”

“ _Ungrateful_ ? The only thing I have to thank you for is my own name! And if you’ve ever bothered to _scrape_ for anything, it’s the bottom of every bottle you can get your hands on -”

“Get out! Get out of my house! If you know yourself so well, think you’re so bloody independent, then fuck off!”

Rey had taken her at her word and walked silently back out into the night. With nowhere to go, she had, for a few shameful moments, considered walking to Leia’s house and asking for shelter for the night but after a minute or so she knew that it was impossible. She hadn’t spoken to Ben since he left her at the ticket barriers in January and it wouldn’t be fair to put his mother in such a compromising position - if she would even allow her into the house, that was. And besides, she hadn’t thought she could stand being in his home again when he wasn’t there; the despair would burn her alive.

Instead, she had spent the night with the work friend she had been drinking with and the next day was spent scouring the internet for available housing in Sheffield, desperate for anything she could find regardless of how temporary or permanent the lease might be. By the end of the week, she had secured a contract for a two bed house in a quiet suburb just outside of the city centre. She would be sharing with a woman in her mid twenties by the name of Jessika, and hired a man with a van to help her clear all of her belongings out of her childhood home for what she vowed would be the last time.

Jess, she soon discovered, is a lovely person - there really is no other way to describe her. She is approaching the end of her degree in Medicine with a view to becoming a GP. She grows herbs and succulents in the windows of their communal areas and knows an alarming amount of trivia about the band McFly. They often cook for each other when their schedules allow, and Rey takes great pleasure in sitting at a real kitchen table and discussing everything and nothing with a fellow human being over a steaming dish of home cooked food. 

Jess also helped her to nail down a job the same week she had moved in; now she pulls pints at a local bar not too far from the house. It is easy work, on the whole, and for the first time she gets to enjoy tips for her service. It’s nice to chat to the people who come and go, the students, the business people, the older men who nurse their real ale while perched on worn old bar stools who just want someone to listen to their opinions. She collects their stories like thread and weaves a tapestry from them, designing a semblance of understanding about this place that has welcomed her with open arms.

As the months went on and her second crack at university began, she finds that her course, to her delight, is much to her liking and she is already beginning to enjoy the process of making art again after what feels like such a long time. Her peers are friendly and encouraging and keen to compliment her work whenever the time comes to share with the class.

And slowly, with each passing day, week and month, Rey’s life feels like it is getting better - _good_ , even. She is, for the first time in what feels like forever, content with her lot.

_“Arriving at Platform 1 is the 13:52 Cross Country Railway service from Bristol Temple Meads.”_

Rey’s heart does a little skip. Any minute now, she will see him…

Shortly after she had moved into her new place in June, Rey had received yet another message from Ben. It was the latest in a long line of unanswered texts and phone calls that she had been receiving all year, cautious attempts at contact on his end that she had strictly forbidden herself from reciprocating, but equally she still hadn't possessed the strength to delete or block his number. Once she had firmly removed herself from the town they had grown up in together, however, she felt as if she finally had the power to break down the barriers she had lifted around herself in the fallout of their relationship the year before.

Ben

Wed 29 Jun, 09:02

 _Hi. I’m coming home for a fortnight tomorrow, wondered if there’s any chance we could talk?_ _  
__It would be really good to see you. No pressure._

 _Hi. Long story short, I don’t live with mum anymore. Got a place_ _  
__at Sheffield uni so moved out earlier this month. It would be good to_ _  
__speak but I might need a bit of space before I see you properly. Had a lot to_ _  
__think about this year. I’m sorry for the radio silence, there was too much_ _  
__going on in my head the last time I saw you and I had to sort it out._ _  
__I know I haven’t been a very good friend recently but I still care about you_ _  
__and really hope you’re ok._

_Feel free to tell me to fuck off if you don’t want to speak to me_

12:35

_Sorry for the late reply,, I didn’t expect to hear backk from you_

_It’s ok i totally get it that you neede spacee_

_*space_

_Sorry I’m typing to fast_

_It’s really good to hear from you, congrats on moving out and Sheffield, I’m really happy_ _  
__for you. I’d love to talk to you soon, whenever you’re ready._

_I’ve missed talking to you, just wanted to know you’re ok_

They had spoken over the phone that night and then again the following week. Rey had explained that she had felt an overwhelming sense that all of the people around her had been moving on with their lives and she had been so messed up and depressed living at home with her mum again that she had decided to narrow down her stressors as much as possible in such a liminal period in her life, her sexual relationship with Ben being one of them. She had explained, as delicately as one can while reading bullet points from a piece of paper she had prepped before their conversation, that it wasn’t _Ben_ that had been complicating her already complicated life, but the blurred lines of their relationship and the only way she could think to reassert some clarity had been by putting a stop to their contact full stop.

“I should have told you, I know,” she admitted, hanging her head while playing with the tassels of her pyjama shorts. “It wasn’t kind. I just needed something clear in my head; I needed you as a friend. I was so fucked up, Ben.”

“You’re not fucked up, you were just a bit lost, I get it. Yeah, it was hard - I think the worst part, aside from not knowing if you were okay, was wondering if I’d hurt you again. I didn’t - I never -” He sighed audibly on the other end of the phone line. “That kept me up some nights, you know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Now that I can talk to you about it, it's a real relief. I’m really glad you reached out.”

“Those few months, Ben, I just… I’ve never felt so alone, you know?”

“You’re not alone,” he said softly and hot tears swelled over her eyelashes.

“Neither are you.”

Since then, they have spoken several times over voice or video calls. 

Ben is now in his third and final year of university in Bristol. He still lives with his friend, Mitaka, who Rey has met once or twice and likes because he seems to like a good person and a source of positivity in Ben's life. He has started an internship placement with a graphic design company in the city and - for all his humble understatements - it seems to be doing really well.

He is also seeing someone.

This news had stung, but she had kept it locked down with a vicious discipline - until they’d said goodbye to each other, that is, and she'd allowed herself to have a little cry. It was a difficult, alien, unfathomable concept to imagine him with someone else and she knew in theory that this wasn’t exactly fair as she had been the one to dump him - if a person _can_ dump someone they’re not even officially with. But still, it hurt on hearing it for the first time. 

It still hurts now.

A rush of bodies fills the atrium and floods towards the main exit. Rey can feel her eyes bugging out as she scans the crowd voraciously, trailing over faces and bodies and haircuts for anything that might reveal him to her for the first time in so long -

She might have known he’d be the tallest person in the crowd.

Why does her heart still ache when she lays eyes on him? It's been six months now, surely the pang in her chest at seeing him should have dissipated? But no, as he wanders through the crowd, casting about to find her, she still feels that old, painfully familiar skin deep _yearning_ to touch him, smell him, wrap herself around his body.

_He's with someone else now._

She lifts her arm and waves.

After a few seconds, his gaze falls to hers and when their eyes meet, she can’t help but feel like this is the most wonderful mistake she has ever allowed herself to make.

They smile at each other at exactly the same time and the broadness of it, the insurmountable joy in her heart bursts forth like radiant sunlight. For a moment, she is purely, incandescently happy and it is worth all of the pain that has come before.

He makes his way towards her, shuffling around idling members of the public on their phones or staring open-mouthed at overhead timetables. When he reaches a space where the path between them is clear, she starts forward with her arms open and falls against his impossibly large, gloriously warm chest as his hands encompass her frame like a the most natural of reflexes. They stand there for a while, holding each other, before Rey’s more responsible brain cell prods the inside of her skull and she extricates herself begrudgingly from his embrace.

He is looking down at her, eyes shining with pleasure. She grins at him and says, “Hello.”

“Hi,” he murmurs back.

“Good journey?” she asks, for something to say rather than allowing herself to go on staring at him in mute amazement. He nods.

“Fine, just - just fine,” he says. “You?”

He winces and she giggles. “Yep, good walk.”

“How are you?” he asks more slowly, still cringing at himself.

“I’m good. It’s so great to see you.”

“Yeah.” He nods his head, mouth falling into a line of sombre sincerity. There is another pause.

“Well,” she says to break the ice. “Welcome to Sheffield. You ready to see my new home?”

“I’m excited,” he says, looking around at the interior walls of the train station like _this_ is where she lives. “What have you got planned for us?”

“I was thinking…” she muses, taking a step towards the exit which he mirrors in another half second. “We can drop your bags off at mine and have a cup of coffee or something and then just explore for a bit? I can show you my campus and where I work, grab a drink and some food, maybe?”

“Sounds great,” he replies, matching her pace towards the doors leading out into the open air.

On the walk back to her house, which takes roughly forty minutes, she takes it upon herself to point out several landmarks here and there that she has become acquainted with over the last few months: The Crucible Theatre where she and Jess had gone to see a play in the summer, her favourite Mexican take out van, the road leading to her Students Union and the Greyhound Stadium - which she has never actually visited but is at least something noteworthy to mention. After ten minutes or so, they fall into a natural rhythm of conversation that causes any previous anxiety in her heart to melt away, chattering about music and films and their courses and friends like they have never been apart. It is so refreshing to be around him again, a person so attuned to her ways of thinking and feeling that nothing is awkward or dull or misunderstood. She has missed him; _god, she has missed him._

Once at the house, she gives him the grand tour of the kitchen, lounge and upstairs bedrooms, simply pointing at Jess’ as it seems impolite to go into her friend’s space when she is out working an undergrad shift at the hospital. He seems impressed with their surroundings, remarking, “It’s a lot nicer than your last place.”

“You mean Mum’s or my old halls in Bath?”

“Both,” he responds, a little apologetically. She doesn’t take offence because he’s right, of course.

They skip the coffee and decide to go back out again, this time with Rey leading him to her workplace which is a ten minute walk down the road. Her boss and another coworker greet her warmly from behind the bar and ask what she is doing here on her day off, to which she shrugs happily, saying by way of explanation, “This is Ben, one of my oldest friends.”

“Hell _ooo_ ,” hums Jade, her fellow server, eyeing Ben’s physique with interest. Rey rolls her eyes in what she hopes is a good-natured sort of way before ordering their drinks and leading him to the tables and benches outside so that he can smoke. They spend an hour or more chatting and setting the world to rights and it feels so sweetly, gloriously like old times. Her heart races with the joy of it, and perhaps it is the alcohol she has imbibed in but she thinks that she will never, ever not speak to him again, regardless of whatever is happening between them. From this point forward, she will not shut him out. He is too good for her soul, too _part_ of her soul.

The daylight begins to fade quickly after four o’clock and they decide to take a walk through the city, just to take in the sights. They reach the Winter Gardens, a large urban glasshouse filled with over two thousand kinds of tropical plants and when she sees that it is still open to the public, she tugs on his arm and pulls him inside. They wander around the spacious walkways, gazing up at the tall trees and huge leaves blooming all around them and it is humid and lit with hundreds of bright fairy lights and Ben snaps a picture of her hiding behind a snapdragon bush on his phone, smiling all the while as she poses.

They grab a takeaway en route back to the house from an Indian restaurant offering student discount and eat it on their laps in front of the TV, neither of them paying attention to whatever is on the screen. Later in the evening, Jess makes herself known, looking tired as she comes in from her long shift, but she shakes Ben’s hand all the same and feels nice to introduce him to someone from her new life, someone she cares about.

They continue talking on the sofa until midnight, his long legs bent up against hers and she can’t bring herself to check her state of ease when their knees and ankles bump into one another’s. When they are both yawning, heads lolling against the back of the sofa, they pull out the sofa bed together and go upstairs to brush their teeth. She catches his eye in the mirror over the sink and they smile at one another stupidly, and Rey feels so grateful for his presence that it stings her cheeks.

The next morning, she awakes to the pallid glow of the winter sun rising halfheartedly over the city and her first thought is of Ben downstairs, Ben in her living room, sleeping and close and with her once again.

She makes her way down to the kitchen, padding in bare feet to create as little noise as possible, just in case he is still asleep. Once she opens the door at the bottom of the stairs, she can see through to the living room where he is pulling on a pair of jeans. She retreats behind the door again for several moments, waiting for him to finish getting dressed. Her mind, while still ridiculously elated at his being here, has cleared a little since yesterday. The euphoria of him being in her life once again has distilled into the familiar kind of joy she always felt at being near him, and this is a state of mind that her logical brain can now manage to pierce through, reminding her once again of the promise she has made to herself: things cannot go back to the way they were last summer. 

After a time holding her breath in the corridor, she decides that it is safe to enter the room and once her soles touch the cold linoleum, she can see him stretching in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, fully dressed. He catches her eyes and smiles, sinking into a more relaxed posture.

“Hey,” he says softly.

“Hey,” she replies brightly. “Coffee?”

“Read my mind.”

She fills the kettle and sets about brewing them a cafetiere, peppering the easy silence with inconsequential questions like, ‘how did you sleep’ and ‘do you need to use the shower later’. Neither of them are particularly hungry after their feast of curry last night, so she simply pops a few rounds of bread in the toaster before buttering them and stacking them on a single plate to share. They retreat to the living room where they perch cross-legged on the sofa bed which Ben had made up neatly once he got up. They settle into idle chatter for a while, laughing and filling one another in on stories from the months long gap in their friendship. Rey gives Ben a blow by blow account of how her mother had thrown her out of the flat and he listens - scowling - to the grisly details that she has only skimmed over on the phone before now.

“I knew your mum wasn’t, you know, up to parr but fucking hell, Rey,” he groans, rubbing his forehead. “I can’t believe - was she always - has she always been like this?”

Rey nods in affirmation, shrugging her shoulders in a resigned sort of way. He blinks at her, looking into her face as if he thinks he might find something hidden there. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

She swallows a mouthful of lukewarm coffee, weighing up her response. “I didn’t tell anybody to be fair. At first, it was just this normal part of my life, you know? It didn’t give me pause for thought, the way she was, because I didn’t know any different. It was only when I went round to Rose’s in school - and yours - that I realised that something was off about her parenting skills.”

Ben snorts bitterly. “Yeah, just a bit.”

Rey shakes her head pensively. “I don’t hate her or anything. She's obviously got shit going on but - I didn’t, you know… I know now that I deserved better.”

“You did. You do.”

She meets his gaze and he look is suddenly heavy with meaning. She snaps her eyes away from his, reminding herself to be wary of _those_ kinds of looks - ones that suggest he might possibly want to rip the world apart for her.

“Anyway,” she goes on. “Like I said, it wasn’t just you. I only told Rose about it not too long ago. It’s kind of a new thing for me, talking truthfully about my home life.”

“You guys are speaking again?” Ben asks, perking up. He looks genuinely pleased and Rey is struck that he remembered her time of estrangement from her best friend a year back. She smiles at the thought.

“Yeah, we sorted things, we’re all good.” Her eyes widen suddenly. “Holy fuck, I haven’t told you!”

He raises his eyebrows. “Told me what?”

“Oh my god, Ben!” she cries.

“ _What_?” he repeats, more urgently.

“Okay, so - okay, so - it’s not actually like good or bad or whatever necessarily, I mean it depends what angle you’re looking at it from and everything and I feel like I’ve built it up more than I should have now and maybe I’m just being a _complete_ gossip but it is really _wild_ -”

“Rey, I’m having a heart attack over here.”

“Okay, okay, so - Rose and Finn have broken up, okay?”

“Is that it?”

“No, no, but I wondered what was going on there, you know, remember when we -” She pushes hurriedly through her next words. “When we were at Music on the Meadows last year?”

Ben nods his head in affirmation, betraying only a small hint of acknowledgement that at that time, they had been sleeping together. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” she rushes on. “And I saw Finn and he was acting really, like, off. Not just in a drunk way, just in some of the things he was saying about him and Rose. And _then_ you remember Poe shows up and is all cheerful and everything but then there was this weirdness when I mentioned Rose, right? You remember?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“Well, long story short -”

“This is a short story?”

She seamlessly grabs a cushion and throws it at his head. 

“Finn and Rose broke up because Finn realised that he’s gay. And they were, you know, drifting apart for ages so it wasn’t all about that but _now_ , Finn and _Poe_ are _dating_.”

Ben’s eyes are wide. He lets out a whistle. “You take a while to get there, kid, but it was worth it for the grand reveal.”

Inwardly, Rey feels flowers blooming in her stomach when he calls her ‘ _kid'_ once again. How had she almost forgotten?

“So,” Ben continues. “Poe is gay as well?”

“I mean, I haven’t asked so who knows? Having said that, it’s none of my business -”

Ben snorts at this. “Oh, yeah? Because you’ve got absolutely no interest in the matter at all?”

She slings another cushion at him, which he manages to easily dodge this time.

“It’s just - _drama_ , isn’t it?” She grins in spite of silliness. “I haven’t felt so involved in other people’s lives for so long, I just feel like I’m part of a circle again, you know?”

His smile fades a little into an almost faraway look and his eyes, fixed somewhere around her ankles, seem lost in memory all of a sudden.

“You guys were all so tight in school,” he says.

“Yeah, we were,” she agrees, her own mirth fading along with his. “Funny how growing up changes things.”

Ben scratches his head absentmindedly. “I was always so jealous of him when we were younger.”

“Who?” Rey asks, confused.

“Poe,” he answers simply, like it’s obvious. She appraises him steadily.

“Why?”

“Because I thought you two were together - like, a couple. The proper thing, you know. Two popular, attractive, fun people and I was just this moody loser boy in the background.” He lets out a huff of self-conscious laughter. “Obviously I know now that you weren’t, since you told me, but - I was always convinced you liked him more than me and like, who could blame you, right? I was such a little dick -”

“I loved you.”

It is out there in the air between them before she has even registered opening her mouth.

Silence descends between them like a shroud. In a matter of milliseconds, it has filled up every space, every crevice, every pore.

“What?” he asks quietly, dumbfounded.

She is staring at the wall behind him. She cannot tear her eyes away from the spot.

“I didn’t mean to say that.” Her voice is suddenly hoarse, every inch of moisture in her body evaporated into the tense, quiet room. “I loved you,” she says again, and this time it is deliberate because she knows there will never be any taking this back.

“You did?”

“Yeah.”

His jaw works, she can see it out of the corner of her eye.

“What about -” he begins after a lengthy pause. “When - last year -”

“Yeah," she breathes, nodding her head stiffly.

She had never wanted to say it like this. Had never even wanted to say it full stop, really, but it is too late; she is a sail caught in a high wind and slowly but surely she is drifting out into unknown waters.

She hears him swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down the curve of his throat in her periphery. His voice is low when he asks, “And now?”

She blinks and tears her gaze away from the wall to look at him. For a long time, neither of them speak. She is utterly paralysed.

His mouth goes taut, loosens, tightens again. He shuts his eyes and turns his head away, then looks back at her again like he cannot help it. “I don’t understand, Rey,” he says, eyes beseeching. “What did I do? You said you wanted space - I could accept that, really, I could. I know you were going through a lot of things that I couldn’t fully understand or couldn’t help you with in your eyes and that was okay but -” His face crumples a little. “I just thought it wasn’t what you wanted. I thought it - _us_ \- that it just wasn’t fun for you anymore.”

“It wasn’t,” she croaks. “Seeing you and everyone I know go off and have these lives, these really rich, great experiences while I was just stuck at home - it was too painful. I had to make something new for myself, build something.”

He makes an involuntary movement with his hands, like he wants to reach out and touch her but thinks better of it. Instead, he goes on, looking pained. “Why can’t we do that, me and you? We could, you know, build something _together_ , something for the both of us.” He shuffles forward on the bed, closer to her, dipping his head to look imploringly into her face. “I love you too, Rey. I did then, I do now -”

_She can’t take this._

“Stop it,” she snaps. “It’s not fair. You _told_ me that you’re seeing someone -”

“It’s not like that,” he cuts across her hurriedly. “We’re not exclusive or anything, we’re not _committed_ , it’s just a something or nothing -”

“ _It?_ _She_.” Her tone is indignant, angry on behalf of a woman she has never even met. “How can you say that? Does she feel the same way? Have you even asked her?”

He doesn’t reply, merely watches her with the same desperately sad expression on his face. She feels winded, like all the air has been knocked out of her lungs with a sudden, catastrophic, awful realisation. Her face cracks with the pulsing, breathing, living despair that washes over her entire being.

“You haven’t changed at all, have you?” she asks, eyes brimming with hot tears. “Same old Ben. A woman comes into your life and convinces herself that she’s got you worked out, that she’s up to speed with your mood swings and your triggers and your highs and all of the little mysteries that you’re made up of and you let her _believe it_ because it suits you that way and then - something _slips_ out of place and suddenly, she’s just an afterthought -”

His voice is a ferocious growl. “Don’t say that. You have _never_ been an afterthought to me, Rey -”

“God,” she gasps painfully, pressing a palm to her forehead. “I’m still here, aren’t I? I'm still waiting for you to wait for me. Waiting for you to expect me. To love me, as much as I love you. To want me to come through the front door, not just through your bedroom door. I’m so exhausted of waiting for you to know how to need me.”

“I _do_ want you.”

“I know you do. But you don’t know how to love me, not the right way. You never have. You’ve always, always been _so_ close, on the cusp of it. That's why I kept coming back, because I was always convinced that next time - _next time..._ But you just hang there, like you can’t put your feet to the ground. I can’t keep watching you do this to me.”

She takes a shuddering breath, gathering herself.

“Ben, you’ve got your own life and it’s a _good one_.” A sob racks her chest and her next words are choked. “You’ve got to let me have mine. Please. I’ve felt like this for too long and it hurts too much.”

“But I love -”

She lets out a cry that shakes her body and presses her hands over her ears. “Stop saying that. Don’t you ever say that to me again. Whatever you feel for me keeps fucking _hurting me._ ”

“You don’t hurt me?” he breathes and peering up at his face through bleary, tear-filled eyes, she can see that his are glazed with wetness too. “You fucking ghosting me for months when I - I cared about you so much and you just disappeared without any warning! This isn’t what it’s supposed to be like, Rey, it’s supposed to be _good_. It _has_ been before, I’ve felt it and I know you have too. It doesn’t have to be this way, it doesn’t have to be painful.”

“Then we’re clearly defective, aren’t we?” she grits out through a series of irrepressible full body shivers. “We can’t get it right. We’ve tried to for so long, dancing around and fooling ourselves that one day, it’ll be okay. It never _works_.”

There is a pause and then she says to the backs of her closed eyelids, “You need to go.”

"Rey -"

"Please."

It is a lifetime before he responds, “Is that what you want?”

She breathes in. She breathes out. “Yes.”

Ten minutes later, he is gone.

And she is alone again.

To make herself busy, and to rid her home of anything that might remind her of the terrible conversation she has just had, she clears away their breakfast dishes and folds the sofa bed back together, meticulously fluffing the cushions and straightening the throw blanket.

She feels oddly light, like for the first time in so, so long, a weight has been lifted from her chest. But it also feels like the weight belonged to a vital organ: a kidney, a lung, a stomach.

On the coffee table, she sees a book, a paperback novel, that she does not recognise and knows that it must be his. She doesn’t want to touch it, considers bringing over a plastic bag and hurling into one of the neighbours’ wheelie bins. After a second’s thought though, she reaches out and picks it up in shaking fingers, gulping down a lump in her throat. She feels a strange urge to clutch it to her chest but pushes the impulse away forcefully. Instead, she carries it up to her bedroom, opens the doors of her closet and places it in the corner of one of her draws, covering it over with a sizeable mound of tights and socks. Then she closes the wardrobe, turns and climbs into bed, the morning sun no less pale than it had been when she’d awoke. 

August

That morning, it had been raining, the sky shrugging off the last of an overnight thunderstorm that had kept Ben up for several hours, lying awake in the dark. Now, however, it is clear and bright and the sun is piercing the opalescent blue above like a burn, warming his face despite the bitterly cold air as he walks the cobbled street along the riverside. After three years of living in this city, he cannot recall how many times he has traced this same path, making his way to university or social gatherings or for grocery trips. He has always loved the view of the Avon sparkling in the autumn light; it makes him feel welcome, at home.

Things are a little different now.

Since graduating in June, Ben has seen another side to Bristol: early grey mornings as commuters traverse the city on their way to work, darkened evenings when the streets are filled with suited and booted recruitment agents drinking cider and trying desperately to cut loose after a long week, the unchanging view from his apartment window as traffic rolls by just to make it from A to B to A to B to A. Rinse and repeat. It all feels so stiff, monotonous.

There are good things in his life - or rather, things that should be good in theory. His sixth floor apartment is spacious and has a good view of the river, his long suffering flatmate, Mitaka is tidy and respectful of his occasional dark moods, and he has a job working for the company he interned with last year. He is independent, his parents - for their all faults - love him, and he is in good shape physically and medically. There isn’t really much to complain about when looking at the bird's eye view of his world.

And yet, there is a cavity in his chest. It has been growing deeper and wider since the start of the year, not enough to cripple him during his last six months of university but now it feels like a strange weight that he carries around from day to day, like a black hole filled with nothing and _everything_.

Some days, it is hard to breathe around it.

Music always helps. His earphones have been a constant companion over the years, drowning out the hubbub of swirling shit beyond his fingertips as well as the sandpaper roughness of his soul. He has lived with two skins all his life: the one that feels normal, okay, peaceful, and the one that makes him wonder if he was born defective, like there is and has always been something wrong with him. The other skin has its own mix tape that plays on a loop in his brain, telling him he is inadequate, unlovable - that he can do nothing right except hurt the ones that he should protect. Music always helps.

At this very moment, however, it betrays him.

A feminine voice fills his ears as the tracks change and he frowns, unfamiliar with the song. The lyrics croon to him,

‘ _I love making you believe what you get is what you see, but I’m so fake happy, I feel so fake happy. And I bet everybody here is just as insincere. We’re all so fake happy, and I know fake happy…’_

Swiftly it kicks into upbeat synth and Ben realises instantly that this song is from Paramore's _After Laughter_ album. 

“How the fuck did you get on here?” he mutters to his phone, annoyed. He has always nursed a - potentially irrational - hatred towards this album, though it has been so long since he’s thought about it that he can’t quite remember the reason why. He swipes up on his lock screen to change the song and realises that it is a playlist that Rey had created on his Spotify account, god knows how long ago. He pauses, staring at the list of her favourite songs before him.

His breathing feels short so he quickly closes the app and a resounding silence fills his head, interspersed only by the city noises of bus engines and bird song and clattering glass falling into the depths of a recycling bin.

 _No point in dwelling_.

He is only a short distance from the place he is supposed to be, a matter of mere seconds from meeting his dad, Han, who has come into the city for the day for one of their bi-yearly 'catch ups'. This kind of father-son rendezvous is usually emotionally tense enough without adding thoughts of his ex-best friend to the pile.

Thoughts of the girl he had _loved_ a only short while ago.

Loved, ever since he has known her, really.

He runs his fingers forcefully through his hair. It is longer than it has ever been, washed and brushed this morning in an attempt to curb the possibility that his dad will take the piss out of him for looking like ‘some kind of vampire’, as he has suggested several times in the past. He knows, deep down, that it will be in vain, but making the effort is important. 

Rey taught him that.

_No point in dwelling._

He spots Han idling by the Millenium Fountains. His hands are in his back pockets and he is pacing, glancing around at the assorted food vendors and buskers lining either side of the harbour. Ben swallows and dips his head a little, sliding his own hands into the pockets of his jean as he sets a steady course towards the other man.

When he sees his son, Han’s face appears to relax in a sort of relief, that old familiar half-smirk sliding easily into place. There are wrinkles on his forehead now and his jowls are more pronounced than Ben has ever seen them before; suffice to say, his father is finally starting to show his age and yet the old bastard looks good for it in what some might call a ‘silver fox’ kind of way. He wonders if he has a new girlfriend; if he has dated anyone in the last seven years or so since he and Leia divorced, he hasn’t made it known to his son. 

“Ben,” his dad gruffs, lifting one hand in greeting while the other stays firmly planted in his back pocket.

“Hey, Pops.” He returns the brief one-armed hug. They both take a step back and his father runs an appraising eye up and down Ben’s person. His face curls into an approving sort of expression, like he’d previously forgotten what his son looks like and is only just recalling it to memory.

“You look good, chief. Tall.”

“I’ve been this height for a while,” Ben shoots back dryly.

“I’ll say. Broad too. You take up cage fighting?”

“No, just sticking to the weight training.”

“Still look like Dracula’s bodyguard.” Ben rolls his eyes and sighs. _So much for making an effort._ Han continues, “You wear too much damn black. How about a nice -” He casts around, looking at the other people milling about the street and his eyes fix on a bohemian looking white dude with dreadlocks wearing a bright yellow windbreaker. “Yellow?”

Ben raises an eyebrow. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Of course I am, but you should reassess your options sometimes, kid. You don’t have to stick to one style forever.”

As they begin to walk side by side towards the bridge, Ben quips, “It’s slimming apparently.”

Despite the cold, they get takeout coffee and sit on a bench overlooking the water. Han likes to see the many boats chuntering to and fro and they talk a while about the old slave ship, the SS Great Britain, which is moored in a dry dock on the other side of the river for tourists to visit year round. Ben has always considered the commemoration of such a vessel to be uncouth at best, but his argument is always rebuffed with the age old classic ' _but it's a part of our_ history _'_ by anyone of an opposing opinion.

“So,” Han asks, not looking at Ben but he can tell there is a question coming. “How have you been?”

“Easy,” he replies, watching the ark of a seagull soaring on the wind. “Work’s good. Flat’s good.”

“And how are _you_?”

He glances across the bench to his father, meeting his stoically curious gaze.

“You know,” he shrugs. “Fine.” Han nods, looking back out over the water.

“You never thought about moving after you graduated?”

Ben frowns at this, looking down at the rim of his coffee cup. “I like it here. It’s… familiar.”

“Feels like home for you now?” It is uncharacteristic for Han to probe like this, like he is trying to tease something out of him.

“Maybe. I don’t know. It feels different I guess, since…” He purses his lips, thinking. _Since what?_ “Since this year started.”

“Since you finished school, you mean?”

“Maybe,” he says again.

There is a pause between them before Han goes on. “You still speak to your friends from back home?”

Ben shakes his head, snorting mirthlessly. “Gwen and Hux? No. We kind of drifted. Too many differences of opinion.”

“What about that girl, Rey? You still talk to her?”

He gulps uncomfortably and shakes his head again.

“Shame,” Han remarks. “She seemed nice.”

“Did you ever meet her?” he asks, quirking an eyebrow.

“Sure, a couple of years back at Easter or something. I came to see you and - well, she was there anyway, come to meet you after she finished work or something.” Ben nods wordlessly in response. “I kind of thought…” his father goes on, perhaps a little cautiously now. “That you kids might be, you know - an item.”

Ben laughs in spite of the painfully awkward conversation. “An _item_ , huh?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, dad, we were just -” He swallows. “Not for ages. I don’t think we were ever really together, to be honest.”

“Ah, don’t be a coward.” Han waves a hand dismissively and grimaces at his son. “You want to be with someone, you get with them.”

“It wasn’t that simple.”

“What’s simple? You think you’re good with someone, think you’re meant to be with them then you should be. Nothing to it.”

He scowls, resenting this nugget of parental advice. “I guess you and Ma never felt that way, huh?”

Han sighs and leans back against the bench, stretching his legs out before him. “Now your mother and I? _That_ ain’t simple.”

“Don’t see why it’s any different to me and - to my situation.”

“Son,” he starts gruffly. “Your mother and I -”

“Okay, no, it’s cool,” he cuts across him sharply because he certainly hadn’t signed up for _this_ conversation.

“No, listen,” Han insists and Ben falls into a begrudging, taciturn silence. “We loved each other, always did. Well, maybe not _always_ ...” He raises an eyebrow, as though remembering some long gone argument. “But we did. Still do in a lot of ways.” Instinctively, Ben jerks his head to face his father. “What? You think we don’t talk anymore? Of course we do. Every couple of months, we catch up on things, on _you_. That stuff doesn’t just go away.”

“You guys are still in contact?" he asks in a low voice. "Why didn’t I know about this?” 

Han frowns apologetically. “What good would that do, chief? You were going through a hard time when it happened, we both knew it. It was simpler for me to keep a distance and just let everybody get used to it. And once that had happened, we didn’t want you to think…” he trails off.

“You thought I was crazy enough to think you’d get back together?”

“Not to think it; to _want_ it.”

Ben searches his father’s gaze intensely for a moment and then suddenly he can’t bear it any longer. Han is _right_ \- it’s a shock, but it’s true.

“This might be hard for you to hear but… I’ll always loved your mum, Ben. She’s my person, you know? But sometimes, no matter how well you know someone, whether you can hear their thoughts or predict their moods or what have you, you can still be too different. Your mother and I, we hurt each other and sometimes, even though you might want to make it work with someone so much, you have to sacrifice what you have for the sake of each other. Does that make sense?” Ben keeps his silence and Han sighs before continuing. “I couldn’t ever hate Leia. Didn’t always _like_ her but I always loved her. But if we’d carried on that way, it would have eventually put both of us in the ground. I didn’t want that.” He peers across at his son, apparently scrutinising him. “Is that what it’s like with your Rey? You ever hurt each other?”

_His Rey._

Ben swallows a lump in his throat. “I don’t know. Sometimes.” He clears his throat. “More than I’d like.”

“You told her how you feel about her?”

“Once.”

Han nods and for a while, they watch the water go by, sun refracting like diamonds on its surface.

“I wish you’d been there,” Ben says suddenly, surprising even himself. His father looks towards him, but he continues to look out across the river. “I wish you hadn’t gone so far away. I wish - you’d been there.”

He feels a heavy hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. If I could change it…” Han's voice trails away. “But that’s life, I guess. If you want, if you _wanted,_ we could - we could do this a bit more?” Ben tilts his head towards his father. “I mean, I’d like to know you better. Make up for lost time or… something.”

He clears his throat and nods. The seagulls dance overhead. A boat sounds it horn. There are a few long moments of quiet between them before Ben breaks the tension.

“Well, that was sufficiently awkward.”

“Yeah, we don’t have to do that every time, do we?”

“You started it.”

“Finished it too.”

To Ben’s immense relief, they fall into a light banter and no more talk of relationships or feelings occurs between them after that.

Later on, when Ben is back in his apartment, he pours himself a glass of orange juice and stares out of the kitchen window at the passing traffic below. He thinks about what his father had said about his marriage, about how they had separated before they could hurt each other too much.

And he thinks of Rey.

Her words the last time they had seen each other:

_‘I’m still here, aren’t I?’_

_‘You don’t know how to love me, not the right way.’_

_‘I’ve felt like this for too long and it hurts too much.’_

_‘_ _Whatever you feel for me keeps fucking_ hurting me _.’_

And he thinks about his father’s words:

‘ _I didn’t want that.’_

Ben doesn’t want it either.

He presses his forehead against the cool glass and closes his eyes, _her_ face springing quickly to life behind his lids as it so inevitably always does. He thinks of her smiling at him; he thinks of her crying with her face turned away.

Perhaps it’s time that they both came to terms with what is truly between them, whatever it has always been, the undefinable, swelling, alive thing that has always connected them, drawing them back to one another time and time again.

Perhaps it will always be painful for one or both of them. 

Perhaps, as she had said in her living room in Sheffield last year, no matter how they have tried and tried all these years, they are quintessentially defective somehow and thereby quite incapable of being together in the way that he has always wanted them to be.

With a constricted feeling in his chest like someone has strapped a leather belt around it and pulled it taut, he knows the truth with an awful, resounding clarity.

It is time to let her go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and I am deeply sorry for the ending of this one too.


End file.
